Shim

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Shim \Shim\, n.
     1. A kind of shallow plow used in tillage to break the
        ground, and clear it of weeds.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. (Mach.) A thin piece of metal placed between two parts to


        make a fit.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  shim
       n : a thin wedge of material (wood or metal or stone) for
           driving into crevices
       [also: {shimming}, {shimmed}]

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  shim n. 1. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired
     memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the PDP-11
     Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a
     two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will
     have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null pointer). See also
     {loose bytes}. 2. A type of small transparent image inserted into HTML
     documents by certain WYSIWYG HTML editors, used to set the spacing of
     elements meant to have a fixed positioning within a TABLE or DIVision.
     Hackers who work on the HTML code of such pages afterwards invariably
     curse these for their crocky dependence on the particular spacing of
     original image file, the editor that generated them, and the version of
     the browser used to view them. Worse, they are a poorly designed
     {kludge} which the advent of Cascading Style Sheets makes wholly
     unnecessary; Any fool can plainly see that use of borders, layers and
     positioned elements is the Right Thing (or would be if adequate support
     for CSS were more common).
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  shim
       
           A small piece of data inserted in order to
          achieve a desired {memory alignment} or other addressing
          property.  For example, the {PDP-11} {Unix} {linker}, in split
          I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a two-{byte} shim at
          location 0 in data space so that no data object will have an
          address of 0 (and be confused with the {C} null pointer).
       
          See also {loose bytes}.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1994-12-21)