COW
Technology & Computing abbreviation · Programming
| Stands for | Copy-on-write |
|---|---|
| Categories | Technology & Computing |
COW stands for Copy-on-write, a programming abbreviation.
A resource-management technique in which copies share the same data until one of them is modified, and only then is a real copy made. Unix fork(), file systems such as ZFS and Btrfs, and value types in Swift use it.
Example: Btrfs snapshots are instant because COW shares blocks until files change.
Usage notes
Copy-on-write makes duplicating large data cheap and enables instant snapshots, at the cost of fragmentation and extra bookkeeping. The 2016 "Dirty COW" Linux vulnerability (CVE-2016-5195) exploited a race condition in the kernel's copy-on-write handling to gain root access. Also written CoW.
Related abbreviations
More programming abbreviations
- CI – Continuous integration
- CI/CD – Continuous integration and continuous delivery (or deployment)
- CLI – Command-line interface
- CLR – Common Language Runtime
- COBOL – Common Business-Oriented Language
- COM – Component Object Model
- CQRS – Command Query Responsibility Segregation
- CRLF – Carriage return and line feed
- CRUD – Create, read, update, delete
- CVS – Concurrent Versions System
- DAO – Data access object
- DDD – Domain-driven design