资料来源 : pyDict
恶魔,守护神
资料来源 : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Daemon \D[ae]"mon\, n., Daemonic \D[ae]*mon"ic\, a.
See {Demon}, {Demonic}.
资料来源 : WordNet®
daemon
n 1: one of the evil spirits of traditional Jewish and Christian
belief [syn: {devil}, {fiend}, {demon}, {daimon}]
2: a person who is part mortal and part god [syn: {demigod}]
资料来源 : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing
daemon
/day'mn/ or /dee'mn/ (From the mythological
meaning, later rationalised as the acronym "Disk And Execution
MONitor") A program that is not invoked explicitly, but lies
dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is
that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a
daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an
action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a
daemon).
For example, under {ITS} writing a file on the {LPT} spooler's
directory would invoke the spooling daemon, which would then
print the file. The advantage is that programs wanting files
printed need neither compete for access to, nor understand any
idiosyncrasies of, the {LPT}. They simply enter their
implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with
them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the
system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at
intervals.
{Unix} systems run many daemons, chiefly to handle requests
for services from other {host}s on a {network}. Most of these
are now started as required by a single real daemon, {inetd},
rather than running continuously. Examples are {cron} (local
timed command execution), {rshd} (remote command execution),
{rlogind} and {telnetd} (remote login), {ftpd}, {nfsd} (file
transfer), {lpd} (printing).
Daemon and {demon} are often used interchangeably, but seem to
have distinct connotations (see {demon}). The term "daemon"
was introduced to computing by {CTSS} people (who pronounced
it /dee'mon/) and used it to refer to what {ITS} called a
{dragon}.
[{Jargon File}]
(1995-05-11)