17 lines
2.8 KiB
HTML
17 lines
2.8 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>demon</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="../D.html" title="D"/><link rel="previous" href="demogroup.html" title="demogroup"/><link rel="next" href="demon-dialer.html" title="demon dialer"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">demon</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="demogroup.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">D</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="demon-dialer.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="demon"/><dt xmlns="" id="demon"><b>demon</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. Often used equivalently to <a href="daemon.html"><i class="glossterm">daemon</i></a> —
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especially in the <a href="../U/Unix.html"><i class="glossterm">Unix</i></a> world, where the latter
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spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.</p></dd><dd><p> 2. [MIT; now probably obsolete] A portion of a program that is not
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invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to
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occur. See <a href="daemon.html"><i class="glossterm">daemon</i></a>. The distinction is that demons
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are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs
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running on an operating system.</p></dd><dd><p>Demons in sense 2 are particularly common in AI programs. For
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example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules
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as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons
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would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and
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would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective
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inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn
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activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of
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logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its
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primary task was.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="demogroup.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../D.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="demon-dialer.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">demogroup </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> demon dialer</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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