system call
noun1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A function provided by an operating system to allow userspace programs access to privileged features, such as accessing the system's hardware.
- The OS provides a system call to open a file, returning file descriptor that can be used to access it.
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A particular invocation of an operating-system-provided system-call function.
- After a system call, control is returned to the process.
- Derived terms
- syscall