system call
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in computer science, the mechanism used by an application program to request service from the operating system or another application program
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
A high-level overview of the Linux kernel's system call interface, which handles communication between its various components and the userspace
In computing, a system call (syscall) is the programmatic way in which a computer program requests a service from the operating system on which it is executed. This may include hardware-related services (for example, accessing a hard disk drive or accessing the device's camera), creation and execution of new processes, and communication with integral kernel services such as process scheduling. System calls provide an essential interface between a process and the operating system.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “system call” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.