Fork a shell

[M. G. Hand]

> What does it mean "to fork a shell?"

It depends on the context.  It may mean that the program forks, and then execs
a shell to perform some command (for example system(3)), or it may mean
the mechanism by which the shell executes commands itself (ie by forking and
and then execing).  Either way, its a fairly loosely expressed term whose
meaning should be evident from the context.

		marcus hand	(pyuxt!marcus)