chain
1. vi. [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] To
hand off execution to a child or successor without going through
the OS command interpreter that invoked
it. The state of the parent program is lost and there is no
returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on
memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward
compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in
particular, most Unix programmers will think of this as an exec. Oppose the more modern `subshell'. 2.
n. A series of linked data areas within an operating system or
application. `Chain rattling' is the process of repeatedly
running through the linked data areas searching for one which is
of interest to the executing program. The implication is that
there is a very large number of links on the chain.