break1. To cause to be broken. "Your latest patch to the editor broke the paragraph commands." 2. (Of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may debugged. The place where it stops is a "breakpoint". 3. To send an EIA-232 break (two character widths of line high) over a serial line. 4. [Unix] To strike whatever key currently causes the tty driver to send SIGINT to the current process. Normally, break, delete or control-C does this. 5. "break break" may be said to interrupt a conversation (this is an example of verb doubling). This usage comes from radio communications, which in turn probably came from landline telegraph/teleprinter usage, as badly abused in the Citizen's Band craze. 6. pipeline break. 7. break statement. [Jargon File]
Last updated: 2004-03-24
breadcrumbs ♦ breadth-first search ♦ break ♦ break-even point ♦ breakpoint
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