Skip to Main Content
Idaho State University home

Glossary

Filter:
# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z All
T
T&E
TA
TAG
Tap
Tar
TCB
TCD
TCS
TCU
TD
TDM
TED
Tee
TEI
TEK
TEP
TFM
TFS
TLA
TLS
TMC
TNI
Toy
TPC
TPI
TRB
TRR
TSK
Tty
TV
TWX
Trap
  • n. A program interrupt, usually an interrupt caused by some exceptional situation in the user program. In most cases, the OS performs some action, then returns control to the program. 2. vi. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor. " Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions. " This term is associated with assembler programming (`interrupt' or `exception' is more common among HLL programmers) and appears to be fading into history among programmers as the role of assembler continues to shrink. However, it is still important to computer architects and systems hackers (see system, sense 1), who use it to distinguish deterministically repeatable exceptions from timing-dependent ones (such as I/O interrupts).