Originally published at: Understanding the "fork bomb" an 11 character string that can crash Windows, Mac, or Linux machines | Boing Boing
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My first foray into coding ended with me accidentally creating a fork bomb and crashing good ol’ Windows XP.
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This is the infamous fork bomb:
:(){ :|:& };:
Windows doesn’t have a fork equivalent but you can do something like this:
%0 | %0
Which will eventually have a similar effect but not really the same thing. In the Unix version it’s infinitely and exponentially creating copies of itself. In the Windows version it’s just launching a bunch of processes.
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This really isn’t much of an issue in modern linux’s running under systemd because of how cgroups are done.
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Back in the day it was useful for testing timing issues.
Typical of systemd, it even breaks fork bombs!!
/sarcasm in case it’s not obvious
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Why does the porridge bird lay its eggs in the air?
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