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2014-03-27 18:54:56 +00:00

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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>flush</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../F.html" title="F"/><link rel="previous" href="flower-key.html" title="flower key"/><link rel="next" href="flypage.html" title="flypage"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">flush</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="flower-key.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">F</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="flypage.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="flush"/><dt xmlns="" id="flush"><b>flush</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">v.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. [common] To delete something, usually superfluous, or to abort an
operation. &#8220;<span class="quote">All that nonsense has been flushed.</span>&#8221; </p></dd><dd><p> 2. [Unix/C] To force buffered I/O to disk, as with an
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">fflush</span>(3)</span>
call. This is <span class="emphasis"><em>not</em></span> an abort or deletion as in sense 1,
but a demand for early completion! </p></dd><dd><p> 3. To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a
meal). &#8220;<span class="quote">I'm going to flush now.</span>&#8221; &#8220;<span class="quote">Time to
flush.</span>&#8221; </p></dd><dd><p> 4. To exclude someone from an activity, or to ignore a
person.</p></dd><dd><p>&#8216;Flush&#8217; was standard ITS terminology for aborting an
output operation; one spoke of the text that would have been printed, but
was not, as having been flushed. It is speculated that this term arose
from a vivid image of flushing unwanted characters by hosing down the
internal output buffer, washing the characters away before they could be
printed. The Unix/C usage, on the other hand, was propagated by the
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">fflush</span>(3)</span>
call in C's standard I/O library (though it is reported to have been in use
among BLISS programmers at <a href="../D/DEC.html"><i class="glossterm">DEC</i></a> and on Honeywell and
IBM machines as far back as 1965). Unix/C hackers found the ITS usage
confusing, and vice versa.</p><div class="mediaobject"><a id="crunchly-5678"/><img src="../graphics/crunchly-5678.png"/><div class="caption"><p>Crunchly gets <a href="flush.html"><i class="glossterm">flush</i></a>ed.</p><p>(The next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is
<a href="../S/Stone-Age.html#crunchly76-05-01">76-05-01</a>. The previous
cartoon was <a href="../B/batch.html#crunchly-2">76-02-20:2</a>.)</p></div></div></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="flower-key.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../F.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="flypage.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">flower key </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> flypage</td></tr></table></div></body></html>