D

dangling pointer

A pointer pointing to a previously meaningful location that is no longer meaningful; usually a result of a pointer pointing to an object that is deallocated without resetting the value of the pointer.

dangling reference

A reference to an object that no longer exists.

data abstraction

A principle by which implementation details of an abstract data type are hidden so that the user manipulates only the well-defined abstract properties of abstract data types.

data hiding

A synonym for information hiding.

data structure

A collection of simpler data items linked through explicit links or through implicit links. (

See also linked data structure.

declaration(of an object)

A C/C++ construct informing the compiler that a particular symbol represents an object of a given type; no creation is involved.

default constructor

An explicit constructor with no arguments, or an implicit constructor provided by the compiler.

definition(of an object)

A C/C++ construct that causes the compiler to create an object out of "raw" memory.

delete

A C++ operator to delete a memory segment previously dynamically allocated by the operator new ; unlike the C allocators , delete can be overloaded to provide a custom-made or debugging version, and errors can be handled through exceptions.

delete[]

A C++ operator to delete a memory segment previously dynamically allocated by the operator new[] ; unlike the C allocators, delete[] can be overloaded to provide a custom-made or debugging version, and errors can be handled through exceptions.

dereference operator *

A synonym for indirection operator.

derived class

A class extending another class; a synonym for subclass.

destructor

A special method of each class that is automatically used when an object of the class is being destroyed (either implicitly when a function in which it is local is terminating, or explicitly when an object is being deallocated using the operator delete ).

distributed computing

Setup of a computing environment in which data and/or code used by a program may physically reside on other machines of the network yet be accessible for the program as if they resided on the same machine; in particular, this enables many programs running on different machines to cooperate toward the same goal.

dynamic data

Data stored in dynamically allocated memory; also, a section in the program address space for dynamically allocated memory.

dynamic memory allocation

The process of requesting and obtaining additional memory segments during the execution of a program.

dynamic memory deallocation

The process of "returning" previously allocated dynamic memory to the process memory manager.

dynamicmulti-dimensionalarray

A dynamically created data structure that allows access through multiple indexes with the same syntax as that used for static multi-dimensional arrays.

dynamic one-dimensional array

An array whose segment to hold the array items has been allocated dynamically.