2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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foreground
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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vt. [Unix; common] To bring a task to the top of one's stack for immediate
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processing, and hackers often use it in this sense for non-computer tasks.
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If your presentation is due next week, I guess I'd better foreground writing
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up the design document. Technically, on a timesharing system, a task
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executing in foreground is one able to accept input from and return output
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to the user; oppose background. Nowadays this term is primarily associated
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with Unix , but it appears first to have been used in this sense on OS/360.
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Normally, there is only one foreground task per terminal (or terminal
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window); having multiple processes simultaneously reading the keyboard is a
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good way to lose.
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