Glossary

• abstraction  

  (v) The process of separating the interface to some functionality from the underlying implementation in such a way that the implementation can be changed without changing the way that piece of code is used. (n) The API (interface) for some piece of functionality that has been separated in this way.



• address space  

  The virtual address ranges available to a given task (note: the task may be the kernel). In OS X, processes do not share the same address space. The address spaces of multiple processes can, however, point to the same physical address ranges. This is referred to as shared memory.



• anonymous memory  

  Virtual memory backed by the default pager to swap files, rather than by a persistent object. Anonymous memory is zero-initialized and exists only for the life of the task. See also default pager; task.



• API (application programming interface)  

  The interface (calling convention) by which an application program accesses a service. This service may be provided by the operating system, by libraries, or by other parts of the application.



• Apple Public Source License  

  Apple’s Open Source license, available at http://www.apple.com/publicsource. Darwin is distributed under this license. See also Open Source.



• AppleTalk  

  A suite of network protocols that is standard on Macintosh computers.



• ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)  

  A 7-bit character set (commonly represented using 8 bits) that defines 128 unique character codes. See also Unicode.



• BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution  

  Formerly known as the Berkeley version of UNIX, BSD is now simply called the BSD operating system. The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is based on FreeBSD, a version of BSD.



• bundle  

  A directory that stores executable code and the software resources related to that code. Applications, plug-ins, and frameworks represent types of bundles. Except for frameworks, bundles are presented by the Finder as if they were a single file.



• Carbon  

  An application environment in OS X that features a set of programming interfaces derived from earlier versions of the Mac OS. The Carbon APIs have been modified to work properly with OS X. Carbon applications can run in OS X, Mac OS 9, and all versions of Mac OS 8 later than Mac OS 8.1 (with appropriate libraries).



• Classic  

  An application environment in OS X that lets users run non-Carbon legacy Mac OS software. It supports programs built for both Power PC and 68K processor architectures.



• clock  

  An object used to abstract time in Mach.



• Cocoa  

  An advanced object-oriented development platform on OS X. Cocoa is a set of frameworks with programming interfaces in both Java and Objective-C. It is based on the integration of OPENSTEP, Apple technologies, and Java.



• condition variable  

  Essentially a wait queue with additional locking semantics. When a thread sleeps waiting for some event to occur, it releases a related lock so that another thread can cause that event to occur. When the second thread posts the event, the first thread wakes up, and, depending on the condition variable semantics used, either takes the lock immediately or begins waiting for the lock to become available.



• console  

  (1) A text-based login environment that also displays system log messages, kernel panics, and other information. (2) A special window in OS X that displays messages that would be printed to the text console if the GUI were not in use. This window also displays output written to the standard error and standard output streams by applications launched from the Finder. (3) An application by the same name that displays the console window.



• control port  

  In Mach, access to the control port allows an object to be manipulated. Also called the privileged port. See also port; name port.



• cooperative multitasking  

  A multitasking environment in which a running program can receive processing time only if other programs allow it; each application must give up control of the processor cooperatively in order to allow others to run. Mac OS 9 is a cooperative multitasking environment. See also preemptive multitasking.



• copy-on-write  

  A delayed copy optimization used in Mach. The object to be copied is marked temporarily read-only. When a thread attempts to write to any page in that object, a trap occurs, and the kernel copies only the page or pages that are actually being modified. See also thread.



• daemon  

  A long-lived process, usually without a visible user interface, that performs a system-related service. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system and may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals. They may also be spawned by other daemons.



• Darwin  

  The core of OS X, Darwin is an Open Source project that includes the Darwin kernel, the BSD commands and C libraries, and several additional features.The Darwin kernel is synonymous with the OS X kernel.



• default pager  

  In Mach, one of the built-in pagers. The default pager handles nonpersistent (anonymous) memory. See also anonymous memory; vnode pager; pager.



• demand paging  

  An operating-system facility that brings pages of data from disk into physical memory only as they are needed.



• DLIL (Data Link Interface Layer)  

  The part of the OS X kernel’s networking infrastructure that provides the interface between protocol handling and network device drivers in the I/O Kit. A generalization of the BSD “ifnet” architecture.



• DMA (direct memory access)  

  A means of transferring data between host memory and a peripheral device without requiring the host processor to move the data itself. This reduces processor overhead for I/O operations and may reduce contention on the processor bus.



• driver  

  Software that deals with getting data to and from a device, as well as control of that device. In the I/O Kit, an object that manages a piece of hardware (a device), implementing the appropriate I/O Kit abstractions for that device. See also object.



• DVD (Digital Versatile Disc)  

  Originally, Digital Video Disc. An optical storage medium that provides greater capacity and bandwidth than CD-ROM; DVDs are frequently used for multimedia as well as data storage.



• dyld (dynamic link editor)  

  A utility that allows programs to dynamically load (and link to) needed functions.



• EMMI (External Memory Management Interface)  

  Mach’s interface to memory objects that allows their contents to be contributed by user-mode tasks. See also external pager.



• Ethernet  

  A family of high-speed local area network technologies in common use. Some common variants include 802.3 and 802.11 (Airport).



• exception  

  An interruption to the normal flow of program control, caused by the program itself or by executing an illegal instruction.



• exception port  

  A Mach port on which a task or thread receives messages when exceptions occur.



• external pager  

  A module that manages the relationship between virtual memory and a backing store. External pagers are clients of Mach’s EMMI. The pager API is currently not exported to user space. The built-in pagers in OS X are the default pager, the device pager, and the vnode pager. See also EMMI (External Memory Management Interface).



• family  

  In the I/O Kit, a family defines a collection of software abstractions that are common to all devices of a particular category (for example, PCI, storage, USB). Families provide functionality and services to drivers. See also driver.



• FAT (file allocation table)  

  A data structure used in the MS-DOS file system. Also synonymous with the file system that uses it. The FAT file system is also used as part of Microsoft Windows and has been adopted for use inside devices such as digital cameras.



• fat files  

  See universal binaries.



• FIFO (first-in first-out)  

  A data processing scheme in which data is read in the order in which it was written, processes are run in the order in which they were scheduled, and so forth.



• file descriptor  

  A per-process unique, nonnegative integer used to identify an open file (or socket).



• firewall  

  Software (or a computer running such software) that prevents unauthorized access to a network by users outside of the network.



• fixed-priority policy  

  In Mach, a scheduling policy in which threads execute for a certain quantum of time, and then are put at the end of the queue of threads of equal priority.



• fork  

  (1) A stream of data that can be opened and accessed individually under a common filename. The Macintosh Standard and Extended file systems store a separate “data” fork and a “resource” fork as part of every file; data in each fork can be accessed and manipulated independently of the other. (2) In BSD, fork is a system call that creates a new process.



• framework  

  A bundle containing a dynamic shared library and associated resources, including image files, header files, and documentation. Frameworks are often used to provide an abstraction for manipulating device driver families from applications.



• FreeBSD  

  A variant of the BSD operating system. See http://www.freebsd.org for details.



• gdb (GNU debugger)  

  gdb is a powerful, source-level debugger with a command-line interface. gdb is a popular Open Source debugger and is included with the OS X developer tools.



• HFS (hierarchical file system)  

  The Mac OS Standard file system format, used to represent a collection of files as a hierarchy of directories (folders), each of which may contain either files or folders themselves.



• HFS+  

  The Mac OS Extended file system format. This file system format was introduced as part of Mac OS 8.1, adding support for filenames longer than 31 characters, Unicode representation of file and directory names, and efficient operation on larger disks.



• host  

  (1) The computer that is running (is host to) a particular program or service. The term is usually used to refer to a computer on a network. (2) In debugging, the computer that is running the debugger itself. In this context, the target is the machine running the application, kernel, or driver being debugged.



• host processor  

  The microprocessor on which an application program resides. When an application is running, the host processor may call other, peripheral microprocessors, such as a digital signal processor, to perform specialized operations.



• IDE (integrated development environment)  

  An application or set of tools that allows a programmer to write, compile, edit, and in some cases test and debug within an integrated, interactive environment.



• inheritance attribute  

  In Mach, a value indicating the degree to which a parent process and its child process share pages in the parent process’s address space. A memory page can be inherited as copy-on-write, shared, or not at all.



• in-line data  

  Data that’s included directly in a Mach message, rather than referred to by a pointer. See also out-of-line data.



• info plist  

  See information property list.



• information property list  

  A special form of property list with predefined keys for specifying basic bundle attributes and information of interest, such as supported document types and offered services. See also bundle; property list.



• interrupt service thread  

  A thread running in kernel space for handling I/O that is triggered by an interrupt, but does not run in an interrupt context. Also called an I/O service thread.



• I/O (input/output)  

  The exchange of data between two parts of a computer system, usually between system memory and a peripheral device.



• I/O Kit  

  Apple’s object-oriented I/O development model. The I/O Kit provides a framework for simplified driver development, supporting many families of devices. See also family.



• I/O service thread  

  See interrupt service thread.



• IPC (interprocess communication)  

  The transfer of information between processes or between the kernel and a process.



• IPL (interrupt priority level)  

  A means of basic synchronization on uniprocessor systems in traditional BSD systems, set using the spl macro. Interrupts with lower priority than the current IPL will not be acted upon until the IPL is lowered. In many parts of the kernel, changing the IPL in OS X is not useful as a means of synchronization. New use of spl macros is discouraged. See also spl (set priority level).



• KDP  

  The kernel shim used for communication with a remote debugger (gdb).



• Kerberos  

  An authentication system based on symmetric key cryptography. Used in MIT Project Athena and adopted by the Open Software Foundation (OSF).



• kernel  

  The complete OS X core operating-system environment that includes Mach, BSD, the I/O Kit, file systems, and networking components.



• kernel crash  

  An unrecoverable system failure in the kernel caused by an illegal instruction, memory access exception, or other failure rather than explicitly triggered as in a panic. See also panic.



• kernel extension  

  See KEXT (kernel extension).



• kernel mode  

  See supervisor mode.



• kernel panic  

  See panic.



• kernel port  

  A Mach port whose receive right is held by the kernel. See also task port; thread port.



• KEXT (kernel extension)  

  A bundle that extends the functionality of the kernel. The I/O Kit, File system, and Networking components are designed to allow and expect the creation and use of KEXTs.



• KEXT binary  

  A file (or files) in Mach-O format, containing the actual binary code of a KEXT. A KEXT binary is the minimum unit of code that can be loaded into the kernel. Also called a kernel module or KMOD. See also KEXT (kernel extension); Mach-O.



• key signing  

  In public key cryptography, to (electronically) state your trust that a public key really belongs to the person who claims to own it, and potentially that the person who claims to own it really is who he or she claims to be.



• KMOD (kernel module)  

  See KEXT binary.



• lock  

  A basic means of synchronizing multiple threads. Generally only one thread can “hold” a lock at any given time. While a thread is holding the lock, any other thread that tries to take it will wait, either by blocking or by spinning, depending on the nature of the lock. Some lock variants such as read-write locks allow multiple threads to hold a single lock under certain conditions.



• Mach  

  The lowest level of the OS X kernel. Mach provides such basic services and abstractions as threads, tasks, ports, IPC, scheduling, physical and virtual address space management, VM, and timers.



• Mach-O  

  Mach object file format. The preferred object file format for OS X.



• Mach server  

  A task that provides services to clients, using a MIG-generated RPC interface. See also MIG (Mach interface generator).



• main thread  

  By default, a process has one thread, the main thread. If a process has multiple threads, the main thread is the first thread in the process. A user process can use the POSIX thread API to create other user threads.



• makefile  

  A makefile details the files, dependencies, and rules by which an executable application is built.



• memory-mapped files  

  A facility that maps virtual memory onto a physical file. Thereafter, any access to that part of virtual memory causes the corresponding page of the physical file to be accessed. The contents of the file can be changed by changing the contents in memory.



• memory object  

  An object managed by a pager that represents the memory, file, or other storage that backs a VM object. See also pager.



• memory protection  

  A system of memory management in which programs are prevented from being able to modify or corrupt the memory partition of another program, usually through the use of separate address spaces.



• message  

  A unit of data sent by one task or thread that is guaranteed to be delivered atomically to another task or thread. In Mach, a message consists of a header and a variable-length body. Some system services are invoked by passing a message from a thread to the Mach port representing the task that provides the desired service.



• microkernel  

  A kernel implementing a minimal set of abstractions. Typically, higher-level OS services such as file systems and device drivers are implemented in layers above a microkernel, possibly in trusted user-mode servers. OS X is a hybrid between microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures. See also monolithic kernel.



• MIG (Mach interface generator)  

  (1) A family of software that generates and supports the use of a procedure call interface to Mach’s system of interprocess communication. (2) The interface description language supported by MIG.



• monolithic kernel  

  A kernel architecture in which all pieces of the kernel are closely intertwined. A monolithic kernel provides substantial performance improvements. It is difficult to evolve the individual components independently, however. The OS X kernel is a hybrid of the monolithic and microkernel models. See also microkernel.



• multicast  

  A process in which a single packet can be addressed to multiple recipients. Multicast is used, for example, in streaming video, in which many megabytes of data are sent over the network.



• multihoming  

  The ability to have multiple network addresses in one computer, usually on different networks. For example, multihoming might be used to create a system in which one address is used to talk to hosts outside a firewall and the other to talk to hosts inside; the computer provides facilities for passing information between the two.



• multitasking  

  The concurrent execution of multiple programs. OS X uses preemptive multitasking. Mac OS 9 uses cooperative multitasking.



• mutex  

  See mutex lock (mutual exclusion lock).



• mutex lock (mutual exclusion lock)  

  A type of lock characterized by putting waiting threads to sleep until the lock is available.



• named (memory) entry  

  A handle (a port) to a mappable object backed by a memory manager. The object can be a region or a memory object.



• name port  

  In Mach, access to the name port allows non-privileged operations against an object (for example, obtaining information about the object). In effect, it provides a name for the object without providing any significant access to the object. See also port; control port.



• named region  

  In Mach, a form of named memory entry that provides a form of memory sharing.



• namespace  

  An agreed-upon context in which names (identifiers) can be defined. Within a given namespace, all names must be unique.



• NAT (network address translation)  

  A scheme that transforms network packets at a gateway so network addresses that are valid on one side of the gateway are translated into addresses that are valid on the other side.



• network  

  A group of hosts that can communicate with each other.



• NFS (network file system)  

  A commonly used file server protocol often found in UNIX and UNIX-based environments.



• NKE (network kernel extension)  

  A type of KEXT that provides a way to extend and modify the networking infrastructure of OS X dynamically without recompiling or relinking the kernel.



• NMI (nonmaskable interrupt)  

  An interrupt produced by a particular keyboard sequence or button that cannot be blocked in software. It can be used to interrupt a hung system, for example to drop into a debugger.



• nonsimple message  

  In Mach, a message that contains either a reference to a port or a pointer to data. See also simple message.



• notify port  

  A special Mach port that is part of a task. A task’s notify port receives messages from the kernel advising the task of changes in port access rights and of the status of messages it has sent.



• nub  

  An I/O Kit object that represents a point of connection for a device or logical service. Each nub provides access to the device or service it represents, and provides such services as matching, arbitration, and power management. It is most common that a driver publishes one nub for each individual device or service it controls; it is possible for a driver that vends only a single device or service to act as its own nub.



• NVRAM (nonvolatile RAM)  

  RAM storage that retains its state even when the power is off. See also RAM (random-access memory).



• object  

  (1) A collection of data. (2) In Mach, a collection of data, with permissions and ownership. (3) In object-oriented programming, an instance of a class.



• OHCI (Open Host Controller Interface)  

  The register-level standards that are used by most USB and Firewire controller chips.



• Open Source  

  Software that includes freely available access to source code, redistribution, modification, and derived works. The full definition is available at http://www.opensource.org.



• Open Transport  

  A communications architecture for implementing network protocols and other communication features on computers running classic Mac OS. Open Transport provides a set of programming interfaces that supports, among other things, both the AppleTalk and TCP/IP protocols.



• out-of-line data  

  Data that’s passed by reference in a Mach message, rather than being included in the message. See also in-line data.



• packet  

  An individual piece of information sent on a network.



• page  

  (n) (1) The largest block of virtual address space for which the underlying physical address space is guaranteed contiguous—in other words, the unit of mapping between virtual and physical addresses. (2) logical page size: The minimum unit of information that an anonymous pager transfers between system memory and the backing store. (3) physical page size: The unit of information treated as a unit by a hardware MMU. The logical page size must be at least as large as the physical page size for hardware-based memory protection to be possible. (v) To move data between memory and a backing store.



• pager  

  A module responsible for providing the data for the pages of a memory object. See also default pager; vnode pager.



• panic  

  An unrecoverable system failure explicitly triggered by the kernel with a call to panic. See also kernel crash.



• PEF (Preferred Executable Format)  

  The format of executable files used for applications and shared libraries in Mac OS 9; supported in OS X. The preferred format for OS X is Mach-O.



• physical address  

  An address to which a hardware device, such as a memory chip, can directly respond. Programs, including the Mach kernel, use virtual addresses that are translated to physical addresses by mapping hardware controlled by the Mach kernel.



• pmap  

  Part of Mach VM that provides an abstract way to set and fetch virtual to physical mappings from hardware. The pmap system is the machine-dependent layer of the VM system.



• port  

  In Mach, a secure unidirectional channel for communication between tasks running on a single system. In IP transport protocols, an integer identifier used to select a receiving service for an incoming packet, or to specify the sender of an outgoing packet.



• port name  

  In Mach, an integer index into a port namespace; a port right is specified with respect to its port name. See also port rights.



• port rights  

  In Mach, the ability to send to or receive from a Mach port. Also known as port access rights.



• port set  

  In Mach, a set of zero or more Mach ports. A thread can receive messages sent to any of the ports contained in a port set by specifying the port set as a parameter to msg_receive().



• POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface)  

  A standard that defines a set of operating-system services. It is supported by ISO/IEC, IEEE, and The Open Group.



• preemption  

  The act of interrupting a currently running program in order to give time to another task.



• preemptive multitasking  

  A type of multitasking in which the operating system can interrupt a currently running task in order to run another task, as needed. See also cooperative multitasking.



• priority  

  In scheduling, a number that indicates how likely a thread is to run. The higher the thread’s priority, the more likely the thread is to run. See also scheduling policy.



• process  

  A BSD abstraction for a running program. A process’s resources include an address space, threads, and file descriptors. In OS X, a process is based on one Mach task and one or more Mach threads.



• process identifier (PID),  

  A number that uniquely identifies a process. Also called a process ID.



• programmed I/O  

  I/O in which the CPU accomplishes data transfer with explicit load and store instructions to device registers, rather than DMA, and without the use of interrupts. This data transfer is often done in a byte-by-byte, or word-by-word fashion. Also known as direct or polled I/O. See also DMA (direct memory access).



• property list  

  A textual way to represent data. Elements of the property list represent data of certain types, such as arrays, dictionaries, and strings. System routines allow programs to read property lists into memory and convert the textual data representation into “real” data. See also information property list.



• protected memory  

  See memory protection.



• protocol handler  

  A network module that extracts data from input packets (giving the data to interested programs) and inserts data into output packets (giving the output packet to the appropriate network device driver).



• pthreads  

  The POSIX threads implementation. See also POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface); thread.



• quantum  

  The fixed amount of time a thread or process can run before being preempted.



• RAM (random-access memory)  

  Memory that a microprocessor can either read from or write to.



• real-time performance  

  Performance characterized by guaranteed worst-case response times. Real-time support is important for applications such as multimedia.



• receive rights  

  In Mach, the ability to receive messages on a Mach port. Only one task at a time can have receive rights for any one port. See also send rights.



• remote procedure call  

  See RPC (remote procedure call).



• reply port  

  A Mach port associated with a thread that is used in remote procedure calls.



• ROM (read-only memory)  

  Memory that cannot be written to.



• root  

  (1) An administrative account with special privileges. For example, only the root account can load kernel extensions.(2) In graph theory, the base of a tree. (3) root directory: The base of a file system tree. (4) root file system: The primary file system off which a computer boots, so named because it includes the root node of the file system tree.



• routine  

  In Mach, a remote procedure call that returns a value. This can be used for synchronous or asynchronous operations. See also simpleroutine.



• RPC (remote procedure call)  

  An interface to IPC that appears (to the caller) as an ordinary function call. In Mach, RPCs are implemented using MIG-generated interface libraries and Mach messages.



• scheduling  

  The determination of when each process or task runs, including assignment of start times.



• scheduling policy  

  In Mach, how the thread’s priority is set and under what circumstances the thread runs. See also priority.



• SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface)  

  A standard communications protocol used for connecting devices such as disk drives to computers. Also, a family of physical bus designs and connectors commonly used to carry SCSI communication.



• semaphore  

  Similar to a lock, except that a finite number of threads can be holding a semaphore at the same time. See also lock.



• send rights  

  In Mach, the ability to send messages to a Mach port. Many tasks can have send rights for the same port. See also receive rights.



• session key  

  In cryptography, a temporary key that is only used for one message, one connection session, or similar. Session keys are generally treated as shared secrets, and are frequently exchanged over a channel encrypted using public key cryptography.



• shadow object  

  In Mach VM, a memory object that holds modified pages that originally belonged to another memory object. This is used when an object that was duplicated in a copy-on-write fashion is modified. If a page is not found in this shadow object, the original object is referenced.



• simple message  

  In Mach, a message that contains neither references to ports nor pointers to data. See also nonsimple message.



• simpleroutine  

  In Mach, a remote procedure call that does not return a value, and has no out or inout parameters. This can be used for asynchronous operations. See also routine.



• SMP (symmetric multiprocessing)  

  A system architecture in which two or more processors are managed by one kernel, share the same memory, have equal access to I/O devices, and in which any task, including kernel tasks, can run on any processor.



• spinlock  

  Any of a family of lock types characterized by continuously polling to see if a lock is available, rather than putting the waiting thread to sleep.



• spin/sleep lock  

  Any of a family of lock types characterized by some combination of the behaviors of spinlocks and mutex (sleep) locks.



• spl (set priority level)  

  A macro that sets the current IPL. Interrupts with lower priority than the current IPL will not be acted upon until the IPL is lowered. The spl macros have no effect in many parts of OS X, so their use is discouraged as a means of synchronization in new programming except when modifying code that already uses spl macros. See also IPL (interrupt priority level).



• socket  

  (1) In a user process, a file descriptor that has been allocated using socket(2). (2) In the kernel, the data structure allocated when the kernel’s implementation of the socket(2) call is made. (3) In AppleTalk protocols, a socket serves the same purpose as a port in IP transport protocols.



• submap  

  A collection of mappings in the VM system that is shared among multiple Mach tasks.



• supervisor mode  

  Also known as kernel mode, the processor mode in which certain privileged instructions can be executed, including those related to page table management, cache management, clock setting, and so on.



• symmetric multiprocessing  

  See SMP (symmetric multiprocessing).



• task  

  A Mach abstraction, consisting of a virtual address space and a port namespace. A task itself performs no computation; rather, it is the framework in which threads run. See also thread.



• task port  

  A kernel port that represents a task and is used to manipulate that task. See also kernel port; thread port.



• TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)  

  An industry standard protocol used to deliver messages between computers over the network. TCP/IP is the primary networking protocol used in OS X.



• thread  

  The unit of program execution. A thread consists of a program counter, a set of registers, and a stack pointer. See also task.



• thread port  

  A kernel port that represents a thread and is used to manipulate that thread. See also kernel port; task port.



• thread-safe code  

  Code that can be executed safely by multiple threads simultaneously.



• time-sharing policy  

  In Mach, a scheduling policy in which a thread’s priority is raised and lowered to balance its resource consumption against other timesharing threads.



• UDF (Universal Disk Format)  

  The file system format used in DVD disks.



• UFS (UNIX file system)  

  An industry standard file system format used in UNIX and similar operating systems such as BSD. UFS in OS X is a derivative of 4.4BSD UFS.



• Unicode  

  A 16-bit character set that defines unique character codes for characters in a wide range of languages. Unlike ASCII, which defines 128 distinct characters typically represented in 8 bits, there are as many as 65,536 distinct Unicode characters that represent the unique characters used in most foreign languages.



• universal binaries  

  Executable files containing object code for more than one machine architecture.



• UPL (universal page list)  

  A data structure used when communicating with the virtual memory system. UPLs can be used to change the behavior of pages with respect to caching, permissions, mapping, and so on.



• USB (Universal Serial Bus)  

  A multiplatform bus standard that can support up to 127 peripheral devices, including printers, digital cameras, keyboards and mice, and storage devices.



• UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format 8)  

  A format used to represent a sequence of 16-bit Unicode characters with an equivalent sequence of 8-bit characters, none of which are zero. This sequence of characters can be represented using an ordinary C language string.



• VFS (virtual file system)  

  A set of standard internal file-system interfaces and utilities that facilitate support for additional file systems. VFS provides an infrastructure for file systems built into the kernel.



• virtual address  

  An address as viewed from the perspective of an application. Each task has its own range of virtual addresses, beginning at address zero. The Mach VM system makes the CPU hardware map these addresses onto physical memory. See also physical address.



• virtual memory  

  A system in which addresses as seen by software are not the same as addresses seen by the hardware. This provides support for memory protection, reduces the need for code relocatability, and allows the operating system to provide the illusion to each application that it has resources much larger than those that could actually be backed by RAM.



• VM  

  See virtual memory.



• vnode  

  An in-memory data structure containing information about a file.



• vnode pager  

  In Mach, one of the built-in pagers. The vnode pager maps files into memory objects. See also default pager; pager.



• work loop  

  The main loop of an application or KEXT that waits repeatedly for incoming events and dispatches them.



• XML (Extensible Markup Language)  

  A dialect of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), XML provides a metalanguage containing rules for constructing specialized markup languages. XML users can create their own tags, making XML very flexible.