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indirection

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indirection

 

  3  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Indirection  \In`di*rec"tion\,  n.  [Cf.  F.  indirection.] 
  Oblique  course  or  means  dishonest  practices;  indirectness. 
  ``By  indirections  find  directions  out.''  --Shak. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  indirection 
  n  1:  indirect  procedure  or  action  "he  tried  to  find  out  by 
  indirection" 
  2:  deceitful  action  that  is  not  straightforward;  "he  could  see 
  through  the  indirections  of  diplomats" 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  indirection 
 
    Manipulating  data  via  its  address.  Indirection 
  is  a  powerful  and  general  programming  technique.  It  can  be 
  used  for  example  to  process  data  stored  in  a  sequence  of 
  consecutive  memory  locations  by  maintaining  a  {pointer}  to  the 
  current  item  and  incrementing  it  to  point  to  the  next  item. 
 
  Indirection  is  supported  at  the  {machine  language}  level  by 
  {indirect  addressing}.  Many  processor  and  {operating  system} 
  architectures  use  {vectors}  which  are  also  an  instance  of 
  indirection,  being  locations  which  hold  the  address  of  a 
  routine  to  handle  a  particular  event.  The  event  handler  can 
  be  changed  simply  by  pointing  the  vector  at  a  new  piece  of 
  code. 
 
  {C}  includes  operators  "&"  which  returns  the  address  of  a 
  {variable}  and  its  inverse  "*"  which  returns  the  variable  at  a 
  given  address. 
 
  (1997-02-06)




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