ATing system, jargon> A piece of code or a coding technique thAT depends on the protected multitasking environment with relATively low process-spawn overhead thAT exists on virtual-memoryUnix systems. Common Unixisms include: grATuitous use of "fork" the assumption thAT certain undocumented but well-known feATures of Unix libraries such as "stdio" are supported elsewhere reliance on obscure side-effects of system calls (use of "sleep" with a 0 argument to tell the scheduler thAT you' re willing to give up your time-slice, for example) the assumption thAT freshly allocATed memory is zeroed and the assumption thATfragmentATion problems won' t arise from never freeing memory. Compare vaxocentrism. See also New Jersey. [Jargon File] (1995-02-27)