:snap: v. To replace a pointer to a pointer with a direct pointer;
to replace an old address with the forwarding address found there.
If you telephone the main number for an institution and ask for a
particular person by name, the operator may tell you that person's
extension before connecting you, in the hopes that you will `snap
your pointer' and dial direct next time. The underlying metaphor
may be that of a rubber band stretched through a number of
intermediate points; if you remove all the thumbtacks in the
middle, it snaps into a straight line from first to last. See
{chase pointers}.
Often, the behavior of a {trampoline} is to perform an error
check once and then snap the pointer that invoked it so as
henceforth to bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check).
In this context one also speaks of `snapping links'. For
example, in a LISP implementation, a function interface trampoline
might check to make sure that the caller is passing the correct
number of arguments; if it is, and if the caller and the callee are
both compiled, then snapping the link allows that particular path
to use a direct procedure-call instruction with no further
overhead.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
wizzle: v. To convert external names, array indice or references
within a data structure into address pointers when the data
structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also
called `pointer swizzling')...
wizzle v.
To convert external names, array indice or
references within a data structure into address pointers when the
data structure is brought into main memory from external storage
(also called `pointer swizzling')...
aliasing bug: n. A class of subtle programming errors that can
arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via
`malloc(3)' or equivalent. If several pointers address
(`aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the
storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias
and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and
possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the
allocation history of the malloc {arena}....
