nomenclature

What is the difference between a heuristic and an algorithm? kriss An algorithm is the description of an automated solution to a problem . What the algorithm does is precisely defined. The solution could or could not be the best possible one but you know from the start what kind of result you will get. You implement the algorithm using some programming language to get (a part of) a program . Now, some problems are hard and you may not be able to get an acceptable solution in an acceptable time. In such cases you often can get a not too bad solution much faster, by applying some arbitrary

Why did the creators of Java use the name "class" for the classes in Java? Where does this term come from? Java didn't invent the name class - it was used in languages prior, like C++. I think the name "class" refers to a class of objects, as in a classification (or a type). And then an object is an instance of that type. Here is the first definition of "class" from dictionary.com: a number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort. So this is right in line with what we know to be a class in computer

What are the backtick operators (``) called in the context of evaluating their content? If you're referring to bash then the backticks are known as "command substitution". $() provides similar functionality. Backticks (``) is an Execution Operator. PHP will attempt to execute the contents of the backticks as a shell command; the output will be returned (i.e., it won't simply be dumped to output; it can be assigned to a variable). Use of the backtick operator is identical to shell_exec() . Eg. <?php $output = `ls -la`; echo "<pre>$output</pre>"; ?> For more info refer: http://php.net/manual/en

This question will draw information from the draft N1570 , so C11 basically. Colloquially, to dereference a pointer means to apply the unary * operator to a pointer. There is only one place where the word "dereferencing" exists in the draft document (no instance of "dereference"), and it is in a footnote: 102) [...] Among the invalid values for dereferencing a pointer by the unary * operator are a null pointer, an address inappropriately aligned for the type of object pointed to, and the address of an object after the end of its lifetime As far as I can see, the unary * operator is actually

It's been rehashed over and over that primitive types don't have constructors. For example this _bar is not initialized to 0 when I call Foo() : class Foo{ int _bar; }; So obviously int() is not a constructor. But what is it's name? In this example I would say i is: (constructed? initialized? fooed?) for(int i{}; i < 13; ++i) Loki Astari mentions here that the technique has some sort of name. EDIT in response to Mike Seymour : #include <iostream> using namespace std; class Foo{ int _bar; public: void printBar(){ cout << _bar << endl; } }; int main() { Foo foo; foo.printBar(); Foo().printBar();

This question already has an answer here: What is this practice called in JavaScript? 8 answers (function() { //do stuff })(); EDIT: I originally thought this construct was called a closure - not that the effect that it caused results (potentially) in a closure - if variables are captured. This is in no way to do with the behaviour of closures themselves - this I understand fully and was not what was being asked. It is an anonymous function (or more accurately a scoped anonymous function ) that gets executed immediately. The use of one is that any variables and functions that are declared in

There are (at least) three ways to link to a resource: href="foo/bar.html" href="/foo/bar.html" href="http://example.com/foo/bar.html" The first is a "relative url", no problem. But I've seen (2) and (3) both referred to as an "absolute url". Which is correctly termed an "absolute url", and what is the proper name of the other? (Bonus points for references to relevant standards or other official documentation.) RFC 3986 defines Uniform Resource Identifiers. A relative reference that begins with a single slash character is termed an absolute-path reference. A relative reference that does not