chair

n 1: a seat for one person, with a support for the back

2: the position of professor [syn: {professorship}]

3: the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization

[syn: {president}, {chairman}, {chairwoman}, {chairperson}]

4: an instrument of death by electrocution that resembles a

chair [syn: {electric chair}, {death chair}, {hot seat}]

v 1: act or preside as chair, as of an academic department in a

university; "She chaired the department for many years"

[syn: {chairman}]

2: of meetings [syn: {preside}]

3: preside over; "John moderated the discussion" [syn: {moderate},

{lead}]

chain

1. (From {BASIC}'s "CHAIN" statement) To

pass control to a child or successor without going through the

{operating system} {command interpreter} that invoked you.

The state of the parent program is lost and there is no

returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on

memory-limited {microcomputers} and is still widely supported

for {backward compatibility}, the jargon usage is

semi-obsolescent; in particular, {Unix} calls this {exec}.

Compare with the more modern "{subshell}".

2. A series of linked data areas within an

{operating system} or {application program}. "Chain rattling"

is the process of repeatedly running through the linked data

areas searching for one which is of interest. The implication

is that there are many links in the chain.

3. A possibly infinite, non-decreasing sequence of

elements of some {total ordering}, S

x0 <◦ x1 <◦ x2 ...

A chain satisfies:

for all x,y in S, x <◦ y \/ y <◦ x.

I.e. any two elements of a chain are related.

("<◦" is written in {LaTeX} as {\sqsubseteq}).

[{Jargon File}]

(1995-02-03)