Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Unixism
     
         A piece of code or a coding
        technique that depends on the protected {multitasking}
        environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that
        exists on {virtual-memory} {Unix} systems.
     
        Common {Unixism}s include: gratuitous use of "{fork}"; the
        assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features
        of Unix libraries such as "{stdio}" are supported elsewhere;
        reliance on obscure side-effects of {system calls} (use of
        "sleep" with a 0 argument to tell the scheduler that you're
        willing to give up your time-slice, for example); the
        assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed; and the
        assumption that {fragmentation} problems won't arise from
        never freeing memory.
     
        Compare {vaxocentrism}.  See also {New Jersey}.
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (1995-02-27)