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Glossary
Glossary
- additive color model
- A way to represent colors as the sum of contributions from primary colors such as red, green, and blue.
- argument
- A value given to a function or program when it runs. The term is often used interchangeably (and inconsistently) with parameter.
- assertion
- An expression which is supposed to be true at a particular point in a program. Programmers typically put assertions in their code to check for errors; if the assertion fails (i.e., if the expression evaluates as false), the program halts and produces an error message. See also: invariant, precondition, postcondition.
- assign
- To give a value a name by associating a variable with it.
- body
- (of a function): the statements that are executed when a function runs.
- call stack
- A data structure inside a running program that keeps track of active function calls.
- case-insensitive
- Treating text as if upper and lower case characters of the same letter were the same. See also: case-sensitive.
- case-sensitive
- Treating text as if upper and lower case characters of the same letter are different. See also: case-insensitive.
- comment
-
A remark in a program that is intended to help human readers understand
what is going on, but is ignored by the computer. Comments in MATLAB
start with a
%
character and run to the end of the line; - compose
-
To apply one function to the result of another, such as
f(g(x))
. - conditional statement
- A statement in a program that might or might not be executed depending on whether a test is true or false.
- comma-separated values
- (CSV) A common textual representation for tables in which the values in each row are separated by commas.
- default value
- A value to use for a parameter if nothing is specified explicitly.
- defensive programming
- The practice of writing programs that check their own operation to catch errors as early as possible.
- delimiter
- A character or characters used to separate individual values, such as the commas between columns in a CSV file.
- documentation
- Human-language text written to explain what software does, how it works, or how to use it.
- empty string
- A character string containing no characters, often thought of as the “zero” of text.
- encapsulation
- The practice of hiding something’s implementation details so that the rest of a program can worry about what it does rather than how it does it.
- floating-point number
- A number containing a fractional part and an exponent. See also: integer.
- for loop
- A loop that is executed once for each value in some kind of set, list, or range. See also: while loop.
- function call
- A use of a function in another piece of software.
- in-place operators
-
An operator such as
+=
that provides a shorthand notation for the common case in which the variable being assigned to is also an operand on the right hand side of the assignment. For example, the statementx += 3
means the same thing asx = x + 3
. - index
- A subscript that specifies the location of a single value in a collection, such as a single pixel in an image.
- inner loop
- A loop that is inside another loop. See also: outer loop.
- integer
- A whole number, such as -12343. See also: floating-point number.
- invariant
- An expression whose value doesn’t change during the execution of a program, typically used in an assertion. See also: precondition, postcondition.
- library
- A family of code units (functions, classes, variables) that implement a set of related tasks.
- loop body
-
The set of instructions appearing between the line with the
for
keyword and the line with theend
keyword. - loop variable
- The variable that keeps track of the progress of the loop.
- outer loop
- A loop that contains another loop. See also: inner loop.
- parameter
- A variable named in the function’s declaration that is used to hold a value passed into the call. The term is often used interchangeably (and inconsistently) with argument.
- pipe
- A connection from the output of one program to the input of another. When two or more programs are connected in this way, they are called a “pipeline”.
- postcondition
- A condition that a function (or other block of code) guarantees is true once it has finished running. Postconditions are often represented using assertions.
- precondition
- A condition that must be true in order for a function (or other block of code) to run correctly.
- regression
- To re-introduce a bug that was once fixed.
- RGB
- An additive model that represents colors as combinations of red, green, and blue. Each color’s value is typically in the range 0..255 (i.e., a one-byte integer).
- silent failure
- Failing without producing any warning messages. Silent failures are hard to detect and debug.
- size
-
An array’s dimensions, represented as a vector. For example, a 5×3
array’s size is
(5,3)
. - slice
- A regular subsequence of a larger sequence, such as the first five elements or every second element.
- stack frame
- A data structure that provides storage for a function’s local variables. Each time a function is called, a new stack frame is created and put on the top of the call stack. When the function returns, the stack frame is discarded.
- standard input
- A process’s default input stream. In interactive command-line applications, it is typically connected to the keyboard; in a pipe, it receives data from the standard output of the preceding process.
- standard output
- A process’s default output stream. In interactive command-line applications, data sent to standard output is displayed on the screen; in a pipe, it is passed to the standard input of the next process.
- stride
- The inter-element increment of a regularly-spaced list of integers, as generated by MATLAB’s colon operator.
- string
- Short for “character string”, a sequence of zero or more characters.
- syntax error
- CHECKME: a programming error that occurs when statements are in an order or contain characters not expected by the programming language
- test oracle
- A program, device, data set, or human being against which the results of a test can be compared.
- test-driven development
- The practice of writing unit tests before writing the code they test.
- type
- CHECKME The classification of something in a program (for example, the contents of a variable) as a kind of number (e.g. floating-point, integer), string, or something else.
- while loop
- A loop that keeps executing as long as some condition is true. See also: for loop.