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System call. A high-level overview of the Linux kernel's system call interface, which handles communication between its various components and the userspace. In computing, a system call (commonly abbreviated to syscall) is the programmatic way in which a computer program requests a service from the operating system [a] on which it is executed.
fork (system call) In computing, particularly in the context of the Unix operating system and its workalikes, fork is an operation whereby a process creates a copy of itself. It is an interface which is required for compliance with the POSIX and Single UNIX Specification standards. It is usually implemented as a C standard library wrapper to ...
write (system call) The write is one of the most basic routines provided by a Unix-like operating system kernel. It writes data from a buffer declared by the user to a given device, such as a file. This is the primary way to output data from a program by directly using a system call. The destination is identified by a numeric code.
stat (system call) stat command line. stat () is a Unix system call that returns file attributes about an inode. The semantics of stat () vary between operating systems. As an example, Unix command ls uses this system call to retrieve information on files that includes: atime: time of last access (ls -lu) mtime: time of last modification (ls -l ...
exec (system call) In computing, exec is a functionality of an operating system that runs an executable file in the context of an already existing process, replacing the previous executable. This act is also referred to as an overlay. It is especially important in Unix-like systems, although it also exists elsewhere.
open (system call) For most file systems, a program initializes access to a file in a file system using the open system call. This allocates resources associated to the file (the file descriptor), and returns a handle that the process will use to refer to that file. In some cases the open is performed by the first access.
read (system call) In modern POSIX compliant operating systems, a program that needs to access data from a file stored in a file system uses the read system call. The file is identified by a file descriptor that is normally obtained from a previous call to open. This system call reads in data in bytes, the number of which is specified by the ...
A close system call is a system call used to close a file descriptor by the kernel. For most file systems, a program terminates access to a file in a filesystem using the close system call. This flushes file buffers, updates file metadata, which may include and end-of-file indicator in the data; de-allocates resources associated with the file ...