Offset (computer science)

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''This article describes the computer science term.

In computer science, an offset within an array or other data structure object is an integer indicating the distance (displacement) from the beginning of the object up until a given element or point, presumably within the same object. The concept of a distance is valid only if all elements of the object are the same size (typically given in bytes or words).

In computer engineering and low-level programming (such as assembly language), an offset usually denotes the number of address locations added to a base address in order to get to a specific absolute address. In this meaning of offset, only the basic address unit, usually the 8-bit byte, is used to specify the offset's size. In this context an offset is sometimes called a relative address

For example, given an array of characters A, containing abcdef, one can say that the element containing the letter 'c' has an offset of 2 from the start of A.

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Last updated on Saturday February 09, 2008 at 09:49:23 PST (GMT -0800)
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