break
1. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to the editor broke
the paragraph commands."
2. (Of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where
it stops is a "breakpoint".
3. To send an EIA-232 break (two character widths of line high) over a serial
line.
4. [Unix] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT
to the current process. Normally, break, delete or control-C does this.
5. "break break" may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of
verb doubling). This usage comes from radio communications, which in turn
probably came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the
Citizen's Band craze a few years ago.
6. pipeline break.
7. break statement.
[Jargon File]
(2004-03-24)
Nearby terms:
BRB « bread crumbs « breadth first search « break
» break-even point » breakpoint » break statement
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