dereference

See also: déréférencé and déréférence

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *de

Proto-Indo-European *-h₁

Proto-Indo-European *déh₁

Proto-Italic *dē

Latin dē

Latin dē-der.

English de-

English reference

English dereference

From de- + reference.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈɹɛfɹəns/

Verb

dereference (third-person singular simple present dereferences, present participle dereferencing, simple past and past participle dereferenced)

1. (programming) To access the value or object located in a memory location addressed by a pointer or another value interpreted as such; to access a value being referenced by something else.

   Attempting to dereference a null pointer often results in a crash.

2. (computing, *nix) To operate on the file or directory pointed to by a symbolic link, rather than on the link itself.

   Synonyms: follow, resolve

   With the find command, any symbolic links appearing after -follow will be dereferenced.

3. (computing, *nix) To dissolve a symbolic link by replacing it with a copy of its target.

Derived terms

• dereferenceable
• dereferencer

Translations

access something to which a pointer or another value points

• Finnish: viitata (fi) (+ adessive), seurata (fi)
• French: déréférencer (fr)
• German: dereferenzieren
• Portuguese: desreferenciar
• Russian: разыменовывать (ru) (razymenovyvatʹ)
• Spanish: desreferenciar
• Swedish: avreferera

operate on the target of a symbolic link

• Finnish: seurata (fi)
• French: déréférencer (fr)
• Swedish: avreferera

Noun

dereference (plural dereferences)

1. The act by which something is dereferenced.
   • 1999, Michael Barry Greenwald, Non-blocking synchronization and system design, page 77:

     Either each dereference must use a complicated DCAS protocol, or each pointer must include a version number that is managed on each modification and checked on each dereference, or storage management must be tightly coupled […]

See also

• pointer

References

• dereference on Wikipedia.Wikipedia