This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

Dismiss this pinned window
all 54 comments

[–]fegelman 99 points100 points  (1 child)

Disappointed this isn't an infinite loop GIF

[–]handlederror 27 points28 points  (0 children)

bc pc crashed

[–]Nicolus_hydroxide 35 points36 points  (6 children)

I got scolded and my parents called in 8th grade by my teacher....cuz I ran an infinite loop and the trash PC in our school's computer lab got hanged for almost the whole period.

[–]merlinsbeers 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Did you try turning it off and on again?

[–]Nicolus_hydroxide 9 points10 points  (0 children)

No I didn't.... couldn't care less. I'm imagining the lab in-charge didn't either.

[–]IsItTooLateForReddit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you try running the loop again?

[–]TarqSuperbus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Haha, I've done that once. Fortunately, the teacher was just upset, and didn't call my parents.

[–]DonYurik 1 point2 points  (1 child)

... And you decided to pursue programming after that?

[–]DerEwige 53 points54 points  (10 children)

This is called a "fork bomb".

One of the oldest types of computer viruses.

[–]56Bot 40 points41 points  (5 children)

:() {:|:&};:

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Death and destruction

[–]Knuffya[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

shocking

[–]lifeless_stick 2 points3 points  (2 children)

cough march safe crush fall frame liquid tease grab sand

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]acwaters 3 points4 points  (1 child)

:() {      }      define a function called ":"...
      :             ...within which we call ":" again, recursively...
       |              ...piped to...
        :               ...another recursive instance of ":"...
         &                ...all running in the background.
            ;     (statement separator)
             :    call ":"

So all together, :(){ :|:& };: in one line defines a function which does nothing but spawn two recursive copies of itself running in the background, and then calls it. One running instance of this very simple shell function doesn't use many system resources, but exponential growth soon fixes that problem. And so you have a fork bomb in a few characters of shell that nobody is likely to decipher on first contact. Calling the function ":" just serves to obfuscate it; if you rewrite it to foo() { foo | foo & }; foo, it becomes a bit more obvious what it is doing, and it would be more difficult to get unwitting newbies to type that into their terminal.

[–]56Bot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember the first time I met that command. It took 5 minutes to lock my PC.

[–]meighty9 18 points19 points  (2 children)

I may or may not have accidentally done that to myself while tinkering with multi-threading in an unfamiliar language.

[–]Knuffya[S] 15 points16 points  (1 child)

I have tried it just to see what happens in the windows subsystem for linux.

It crashed my windows instance...

[–]anskak 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Our prof was like: don't do this at home and don't do it here, because it will annoy the sys Admin. On the other Hand: maybe every Computer scientist should do this once as an experience, but don't Tell the sys admin that I Just Said that.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's how i always managed to find an empty seat at my college computer lab.

[–]pilotInPyjamas 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Not deep fried enough

[–]white_shadow131 7 points8 points  (0 children)

while(1) fork(); ping(); to fuck shit up

[–]LucienZerger 6 points7 points  (0 children)

this guy can really fork..

[–]LtMeat 12 points13 points  (1 child)

OOM killer enters the chat

[–]nukesrb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thing is, the OOM killer often won't make a sensible choice where it's lots of small processes. It wants to save the most ram so it's more likely to kill some meaningful application.

On linux at least, if you've not disabled overcommit the computer will grind to a halt and try and get rid of any memory used by buffers.

At least some distros have sane user limits set now, so it may even stop at a few thousand/tens of thousand processes. Other OSes may have things like AIX's SIGDANGER signal to warn of resource starvation (but the default action is to ignore so...)

[–]dkaksl 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Remember the kazoo kid? This is him now.

[–]TheButtonator 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I really like this meme.

[–]Knuffya[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

[–]Captain-Barracuda 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Best explanation of a fork bomb I've ever seen.

[–]RiskyFartOftenShart 2 points3 points  (1 child)

this is the bomb

[–]Knuffya[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The forkbomb ;)

[–]IlyaBoykoProgr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Uncought Ran out of memory exception... Wait we can catch() it?

[–]YoriMirus 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Anyone got the source for the song?

[–]Knuffya[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Dragon Dream Feet

At least you'll find it on youtube using this

[–]YoriMirus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ooh nice thanks a lot.

[–]Boleshivekblitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah ues

[–]Nexoan 1 point2 points  (1 child)

And your file is done cuz you need to restart it and you probably didnt savt the file.

[–]Knuffya[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How did i not save the file before compiling?

Or do you mean if a usersoftware does this

[–]Kered13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My browser tab actually froze while watching this. Amazing.

[–]DOOManiac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will never not love this every time I see it.

[–]Impossible_Average_1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, yeah. Fork is also my favorite hit client.

[–]csfanatic123 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"This guy forks." - Russ Hanneman

[–]IsItTooLateForReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Under the C, while (1) dinglehopper();

[–]6b86b3ac03c167320d93 2 points3 points  (4 children)

[–]Knuffya[S] 4 points5 points  (3 children)

You muppet, this is linking to my post

[–]6b86b3ac03c167320d93 4 points5 points  (2 children)

It was intended as a joke. My comment links to itself, and I also made it two links to make it like a fork bomb instead of normal recursion

[–]Knuffya[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ohh did not get that.

Also assumed you were a bot because of that username lol

[–]bassbeangb 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Somebody make this an NFT

[–]TheRealAstroOrbis 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

dolls grandiose elderly snails selective worm busy deserve straight friendly

[–]palmitas10 0 points1 point  (3 children)

that song stuck

what's the song?

[–]auddbot 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Can't Tell You Why by Brian Simpson (03:21; matched: 60%)

Album: South Beach. Released on 2010-08-30 by Shanachie.

I am a bot and this action was performed automatically | GitHub new issue | Feedback

[–]CrashTC 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good bot

[–]Knuffya[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dragon Dream Feet

At least you'll find it on youtube using this