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are no longer needed they may be swapped out again. 2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then remember it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. To keep something swapped in means to keep it fresh in your memory: "I reread the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If someone interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say "Wait a moment while I swap this out", implying that a piece of paper is your extrasomatic memory and that if you don't swap the idea out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. Compare page in, page out. |
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swap space n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space." |
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swapped in n. See swap. See also page in. |
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swapped out n. See swap. See also page out. |
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swizzle v. To convert external names, array indices, 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); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termed unswizzling. See also snap. |
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sync /sink/ n., vi. (var. synch) 1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization. 2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see flush, sense 2. 3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a state that would be 'safe' if the system were to crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense). |
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syntactic salt n. The opposite of syntactic sugar, a feature designed to make it harder to write bad code. Specifically, syntactic salt is a hoop the programmer must jump through just to prove that he knows what's going on, rather than to express a program action. Some programmers consider required type declarations to be syntactic salt. A requirement to write end if, end while, end do, etc. to terminate the last block controlled by a control construct (as opposed to just end) would definitely be syntactic salt. Syntactic salt is like the real thing in that it tends to raise hackers' blood pressures in an unhealthy way. Compare candygrammar. |
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