May 15, 2003

sleep

vi.

1. [techspeak] To relinquish a claim (of a process on a multitasking system) for service; to indicate to the scheduler that a process may be deactivated until some given event occurs or a specified time delay elapses.

2. In jargon, used very similarly to v. block; also in sleep on, syn.: with block on. Often used to indicate that the speaker has relinquished a demand for resources until some (possibly unspecified) external event: They can't get the fix I've been asking for into the next release, so I'm going to sleep on it until the release, then start hassling them again.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:30 AM

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