C It was called "C" because many features derived from an earlier compiler named "B". In fact, C was briefly named "NB". B was itself strongly influenced…

2 In names of translation software, infix 2 often represents the word "to" with the connotation "translate to", as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2str…

2. A systems language written by Ken Thompson in 1970 mostly for his own use under Unix on the PDP-11 . B was later improved by Kerninghan(?) and Ritchie …

3. (lower case) The Lispatom used to represent "true", among other things. "false" is represented using the same atom as an empty list, nil. This overloa…

In programming, the operator is sometimes overloaded to perform other tasks like concatenating strings. In the C language and its many imitators, the sym…

mu 2. /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never …

2. A storage allocator with garbage collection by Hans-J. Boehm and Alan J. Demers. Gc is a plug-in replacement for C 's malloc . Since the collector does…

["hung up"] Equivalent to wedged , but more common at Unix/C sites. Not generally used of people. Synonym with locked up , wedged ; compare hosed . See al…

A data structure holding many values, possibly of different types, which is usually accessed sequentially, working from the head to the end of the tail - …

KR ⇝ knowledge representation A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to re…

vector 3. A memory location containing the address of some code, often some kind of exception handler or other operating system service. By changing the …

/glich/ [German "glitschen" to slip, via Yiddish "glitshen", to slide or skid] 1. (Electronics) When the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs chang…

The Lilliputians, being very small, had correspondingly small political problems. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian parties debated over whether soft-boile…

It aims to provide a one-stop source of information about all computing terms and includes many useful cross-references and pointers to related resources…

ABI ⇝ Application Binary Interface (ABI) The interface by which an application program gains access to operating system and other services. It should be …

Software can be split into two main types - system software and application software or application programs . System software is any software required to…

quiesce To render quiescent, i.e. temporarily inactive or disabled. For example to quiesce a device (such as a digital modem). It is also a system comman…

fall thru ⇝ fall through 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e. by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that…

2. Computing usage derives from the mathematical term but is much less strict. In programming (except in functional programming ), a function may return d…

aggregate type A data type composed of multiple elements. An aggregate can be homogeneous (all elements have the same type) e.g. an array, a list in a fu…

By July 1994 this parochial idiosyncracy was on the way out and mailers started to reject big-endian addresses. By about 1996, people would look at you st…

marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ (Or "marketing slime", "marketeer", "marketing droid", "marketdroid") A member of a company's marketing department, especially …

An Intel 486DX microprocessor with its floating-point unit disconnected. All 486SX chips were fabricated with FPUs. If testing showed that the CPU was OK …

mailing list (Often shortened in context to "list") An electronic mail address that is an alias (or macro, though that word is never used in this connect…

A computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word , bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored "little-end-fir…

EUROPa is a different way to connect up and explore the World-Wide Web. It was started at Imperial College, London, UK on 1994-12-22 by Denis Howe just to…

A technique used to support faster sequential access to DRAM by allowing any number of accesses to the currently open row to be made after supplying the r…

hysterical reasons (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done …

The virtual address space (the range of addresses used by the processor) is divided into pages , whose size is 2^N, usually a few kilobytes . The bottom N…

referential transparency An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchange…

Barbara Liskov first wrote it as follows: If for each object o1 of type S there is an object o2 of type T such that for all programs P defined in terms of…

C It was called "C" because many features derived from an earlier compiler named "B". In fact, C was briefly named "NB". B was itself strongly influenced…

2 In names of translation software, infix 2 often represents the word "to" with the connotation "translate to", as in dvi2ps (DVI to PostScript), int2str…

2. A systems language written by Ken Thompson in 1970 mostly for his own use under Unix on the PDP-11 . B was later improved by Kerninghan(?) and Ritchie …

3. (lower case) The Lispatom used to represent "true", among other things. "false" is represented using the same atom as an empty list, nil. This overloa…

In programming, the operator is sometimes overloaded to perform other tasks like concatenating strings. In the C language and its many imitators, the sym…

mu 2. /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never …

2. A storage allocator with garbage collection by Hans-J. Boehm and Alan J. Demers. Gc is a plug-in replacement for C 's malloc . Since the collector does…

["hung up"] Equivalent to wedged , but more common at Unix/C sites. Not generally used of people. Synonym with locked up , wedged ; compare hosed . See al…

A data structure holding many values, possibly of different types, which is usually accessed sequentially, working from the head to the end of the tail - …

KR ⇝ knowledge representation A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualisation - an abstract view of the world that we wish to re…

vector 3. A memory location containing the address of some code, often some kind of exception handler or other operating system service. By changing the …

/glich/ [German "glitschen" to slip, via Yiddish "glitshen", to slide or skid] 1. (Electronics) When the inputs of a circuit change, and the outputs chang…

The Lilliputians, being very small, had correspondingly small political problems. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian parties debated over whether soft-boile…

It aims to provide a one-stop source of information about all computing terms and includes many useful cross-references and pointers to related resources…

ABI ⇝ Application Binary Interface (ABI) The interface by which an application program gains access to operating system and other services. It should be …

Software can be split into two main types - system software and application software or application programs . System software is any software required to…

quiesce To render quiescent, i.e. temporarily inactive or disabled. For example to quiesce a device (such as a digital modem). It is also a system comman…

fall thru ⇝ fall through 1. To exit a loop by exhaustion, i.e. by having fulfilled its exit condition rather than via a break or exception condition that…

2. Computing usage derives from the mathematical term but is much less strict. In programming (except in functional programming ), a function may return d…

aggregate type A data type composed of multiple elements. An aggregate can be homogeneous (all elements have the same type) e.g. an array, a list in a fu…

By July 1994 this parochial idiosyncracy was on the way out and mailers started to reject big-endian addresses. By about 1996, people would look at you st…

marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ (Or "marketing slime", "marketeer", "marketing droid", "marketdroid") A member of a company's marketing department, especially …

An Intel 486DX microprocessor with its floating-point unit disconnected. All 486SX chips were fabricated with FPUs. If testing showed that the CPU was OK …

mailing list (Often shortened in context to "list") An electronic mail address that is an alias (or macro, though that word is never used in this connect…

A computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word , bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored "little-end-fir…

EUROPa is a different way to connect up and explore the World-Wide Web. It was started at Imperial College, London, UK on 1994-12-22 by Denis Howe just to…

A technique used to support faster sequential access to DRAM by allowing any number of accesses to the currently open row to be made after supplying the r…

hysterical reasons (Or "hysterical raisins") A variant on the stock phrase "for historical reasons", indicating specifically that something must be done …

The virtual address space (the range of addresses used by the processor) is divided into pages , whose size is 2^N, usually a few kilobytes . The bottom N…

referential transparency An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchange…

Barbara Liskov first wrote it as follows: If for each object o1 of type S there is an object o2 of type T such that for all programs P defined in terms of…