this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Gentoo users be like (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

You are correct, left hand is a fork bomb. Specifically, it creates and then runs a function named ":". What this function does is pipe its output into itself while running in a background process, which instantly spawns infinite copies of itself. Technically I believe the : character could be any character as its just a name. The creator just picked a colon for aesthetics.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

I always just kind of glazed over looking at that and just know "it's a fork bomb" and basically what it does

With your explanation, I can now actually understand all the parts and how they work, it actually makes sense

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Now I get why it does what it does and how it works. I never thought that the colon was the variable name but it makes so much sense!