Examples and Tools
On Unix, Unix-like and other POSIX-compatible operating systems, popular system calls are open, read, write, close, wait, execve, fork, exit, and kill. Many of today's operating systems have hundreds of system calls. For example, Linux has over 300 different calls, FreeBSD has over 500, while Plan 9 has 51.
Tools such as strace and truss allow a process to execute from start and report all system calls the process invokes, or can attach to an already running process and intercept any system call made by said process if the operation does not violate the permissions of the user. This special ability of the program is usually also implemented with a system call, e.g. strace is implemented with ptrace or system calls on files in procfs.
Read more about this topic: System Call
Famous quotes containing the words examples and/or tools:
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farm should be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)