• Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 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

    • Mixel@feddit.de
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      6 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!