Table of Contents
21st Century C Glossary
Return to 21st Century C, C Glossary
- automatic allocation - “For an automatically allocated variable, its space in memory is allocated by the system at the point of the variable's declaration, then removed at the end of the given scope.” (21cC 2014)
- call graph - “A box-and-arrow diagram showing which functions call and are called by which other functions.” (21cC 2014)
- encoding - “The means by which human-language characters are converted into numeric codes for processing by the computer. See also ASCII, multibyte encoding, and wide-character encoding.” (21cC 2014)
- environment variable - “A variable present in the environment of a program, set by the parent program (typically the shell).” (21cC 2014)
- frame - “The space in the stack in which function information (such as inputs and automatic variables) is stored.” (21cC 2014)
- IDE - “Integrated development environment. Typically a program with a graphical interface based around a text editor, with facilities for compilation, debuging, and other programmer-friendly features.” (21cC 2014)
- manual allocation - “Allocation of a variable on the heap at the programmer's request, using malloc or calloc, and freed at the user's request via free.” (21cC 2014)
- multibyte encoding - “An encoding of text that uses a variable number of chars to represent a single human-language character. Contrast with wide-character encoding.” (21cC 2014)
- NaN - “Not-a-Number. The IEEE 754 (floating-point) standard defines this as the outcome of mathematical impossibilities like 0/0 or log(-1). Often used as a flag for missing or bad data.” (21cC 2014)
- object file - “A file containing machine-readable instructions. Typically the result of running a compiler on a source code file.” (21cC 2014)
- opaque pointer - “A pointer to data in a format that can't be read by the function handling the pointer, but that can be passed on to other functions that can read the data. A function in a scripting language might call one C function that returns an opaque pointer to C-side data, and then a later function in the scripting language would use that pointer to act on the same C-side data.” (21cC 2014)
- POSIX - “The Portable Operating System Interface. An IEEE standard to which UNIX-like operating systems conform, describing a set of C functions, the shell, and some basic utilities.” (21cC 2014)
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - “The claim that the language we speak determines the thoughts we are capable of having. Its weakest form, that we often think in words, is obvious; its strongest form, that we are incapable of thoughts that our language lacks words or constructions for, is clearly false.” (21cC 2014)
- scope - “The portion of the code base over which a variable is declared and accessible. Good coding style depends on keeping the scope of variables small.” (21cC 2014)
- segmentation fault - “Touching an incorrect segment of memory. Causes the operating system to halt the program immediately, and so often used metonymically to refer to any program-halting error.” (21cC 2014)
- shell - “A program that allows users to interact with an operating system, either at a command line or via scripts.” (21cC 2014)
- stack - “The space in memory where function execution occurs. Notably, automatic variables are placed here. Each function gets a frame, and every time a subfunction is called, its frame is conceptually stacked on top of the calling function's frame.” (21cC 2014)
- thread - “A sequence of instructions that a computer executes independently of any other thread.” (21cC 2014)
- type punning - “Casting a variable of one type to a second type, thus forcing the compiler to treat the variable as data of the second type. For example, given struct {int a; char *b:} astruct, then (int) astruct is an integer (but for a safer alternative, see “C, with fewer seams”). Frequently not portable; always bad form.” (21cC 2014)
- type qualifier - “A descriptor of how the compiler may handle a variable. Is unrelated to the type of the variable (int, float, et cetera). C's only type qualifiers are const, restrict, volatile, and _Atomic.” (21cC 2014)
- unit test - “A block of code to test a small piece of a code base. Compare with integration test.” (21cC 2014)
- UI - “User interface. For a C library, this includes the typedefs, macro definitions, and function declarations that users are expected to be comfortable with when using the library.” (21cC 2014)
- wide-character encoding - “An encoding of text where each human-language character is given a fixed number of chars. For example, UTF-32 guarantees that each Unicode character is expressed in exactly 4 bytes. Contrast this definition with multibyte encoding.” (21cC 2014)
Fair Use Sources
- 21st Century C for Archive Access for Fair Use Preservation, quoting, para[[phrasing, excerpting and/or commenting upon
C Language: C Fundamentals, C Inventor - C Language Designer: Dennis Ritchie in 1972; C Standards: ANSI X3J11 (ANSI C); ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical Committee 1) / SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) / WG 14 (Working Group 14) (ISO C); C Keywords, C Pointers, C Data Structures - C Algorithms, C Syntax, C Memory Management, C Recursion, C on Android, C on Linux, C on macOS, C on Windows, C Installation, C Containerization, C Configuration, C Compiler, C IDEs (CLion), C Development Tools, C DevOps - C SRE, C Data Science - C DataOps, C Machine Learning, C Deep Learning, C Concurrency, C History, C Bibliography, Manning C Programming Series, C Glossary, C Topics, C Courses, C Standard Library, C Libraries, C Frameworks, C Research, C GitHub, Written in C, C Popularity, C Awesome List, C Versions. (navbar_c)
© 1994 - 2024 Cloud Monk Losang Jinpa or Fair Use. Disclaimers
SYI LU SENG E MU CHYWE YE. NAN. WEI LA YE. WEI LA YE. SA WA HE.