Glossary - Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design - page 642

appletviewer— A software tool that interprets
and displays Java applets through links in
HTML documents. Part of the Java Develop-
ment Kit.
application— (1) A generic term for any pro-
gram. (2) A Java program that can be run
without the use of a Web browser, as opposed
to a Java applet.
Application Programming Interface (API)— A
set of classes that defines services for a pro-
grammer. Not part of the language itself, but
often relied on to perform even basic tasks. See
also class library.
arc angle— When defining an arc, the radial
distance that defines the arc's length. See also
start angle.
architectural design— A high-level design that
identifies the large portions of a software sys-
tem and key data structures. See also detailed
design.
architecture— See computer architecture.
architecture neutral— Not specific to any par-
ticular hardware platform. Java code is consid-
ered architecture neutral because it is compiled
into bytecode and then interpreted on any
machine with a Java interpreter.
arithmetic operator— An operator that per-
forms a basic arithmetic computation, such as
addition or multiplication.
arithmetic promotion— The act of promoting
the type of a numeric operand to be consistent
with the other operand.
array— A programming language construct
used to store an ordered list of primitive values
or objects. Each element in the array is refer-
enced using a numerical index from 0 to N −1,
where N is the size of the array.
array element— A value or object that is stored
in an array.

array element type— The type of the values or
objects that are stored in an array.
ASCII— A popular character set used by
many programming languages. ASCII stands
for American Standard Code for Information
Interchange. It is a subset of the Unicode char-
acter set, which is used by Java.
assembly language— A low-level language
that uses mnemonics to represent program
commands.
assignment conversion— Some data types can
be converted to another in an assignment state-
ment. See widening conversion.
assignment operator— An operator that results
in an assignment to a variable. The = operator
performs basic assignment. Many other assign-
ment operators perform additional opera-
tions prior to the assignment, such as the *=
operator.
association— A relationship between two
classes in which one uses the other or relates to
it in some way. See also operator association,
use relationship.
AWT— See Abstract Windowing Toolkit.
background color— (1) The color of the back-
ground of a graphical user interface compo-
nent. (2) The color of the background of an
HTML page. See also foreground color.
base— The numerical value on which a par-
ticular number system is based. It determines
the number of digits available in that number
system and the place value of each digit in a
number. See also binary, decimal, hexadecimal,
octal, place value.
base 2— See binary.
base 8— See octal.
base 10— See decimal.
base 16— See hexadecimal.