What is meant by the term “hook” in programming?

Question

I recently heard the term \"hook\" while talking to some people about a program I was writing. I\'m unsure exactly what this term implies although I inferred from the conve

Answer 1

In a generic sense, a "hook" is something that will let you, a programmer, view and/or interact with and/or change something that's already going on in a system/program.

For example, the Drupal CMS provides developers with hooks that let them take additional action after a "content node" is created. If a developer doesn't implement a hook, the node is created per normal. If a developer implements a hook, they can have some additional code run whenever a node is created. This code could do anything, including rolling back and/or altering the original action. It could also do something unrelated to the node creation entirely.

A callback could be thought of as a specific kind of hook. By implementing callback functionality into a system, that system is letting you call some additional code after an action has completed. However, hooking (as a generic term) is not limited to callbacks.

Another example. Sometimes Web Developers will refer to class names and/or IDs on elements as hooks. That's because by placing the ID/class name on an element, they can then use Javascript to modify that element, or "hook in" to the page document. (this is stretching the meaning, but it is commonly used and worth mentioning)