Appendix A, Terms and jargon

HTTP

Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, the protocol used by WWW to transfer HTML from the server to the client. Based on TCP.

WWW

World Wide Web, popularly known as 'the Internet' :)

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol, the Internet standard for computer communication

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Standard set by the American Standards Authority for encoding English letters, numbers , some symbols and control characters in 7 bits. There are also some "semi-standard" systems which add other characters by using 8 bits, which are also loosely called ASCII.

UNIX

A group of operating systems. Some noteworthy Unixes are: Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, Digital Unix, SunOs, BSD and Unixware.

clone

To create an object from a program. Or to use C++ jargon: to instantiate a class.

command line

The line you write to execute a program

command line option

The words after the program name on the command line.

constant

1) A value written directly in the code, such as 1 or "foo". 2) A value defined with add_constant.

identifier

The name of a variable, function, class or constant.

interpreter

An interpreter interprets byte-code instruction by instruction. In this context 'the interpreter' is usually the Pike binary.

iteration

Iteration is when the program is executing a loop. Each time the loop is called is also called one iteration.

object

An object is what you get if you call a program. Objects contain variables and a reference to the program from which they were cloned. Same as 'instance' in C++.

program

1) An executable file 2) A builtin Pike data type. Programs are almost the same as classes in C++ and contain the actual compiled code.

recursion

Recursion is an alternative to iteration. Recursion occurs when a function calls itself.

stderr

Standard error. The error channel. This is where errors are supposed to be written. It is usually the screen, but can be redirected to a file or another program. See the manual page for sh(1) for more details.

stdin

Standard input. Usually the keyboard, but can also be from a file or another program. See the manual page for sh(1) for more details.

stdout

Standard output. This is usually the screen but can be redirected to a file or another program. See the manual page for sh(1) for more details.