meaning of overflow bit
1. overflow bit 1. A flag on some processors indicating an attempt to calculate a result too large for the destination register to hold. 2. More generally, an indication of any kind of capacity overload condition. "Well, the Ada description was baroque all right, but I could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling . . . that set my overflow bit. " 3. The hypothetical bit that will be set if a hacker doesnt get to make a trip to the Room of Porcelain Fixtures: "Id better process an internal interrupt before the overflow bit gets set". [Jargon File] overflow pdl The place where you put things when your pdl is full. If you dont have one and too many things get pushed, you forget something. The overflow pdl for a persons memory might be a memo pad. This usage inspired the following doggerel: Hey, diddle, diddle The overflow pdl To get a little more stack; If thats not enough Then you lose it all, And have to pop all the way back. --The Great Quux The term pdl seems to be primarily an MITism; outside MIT this term is replaced by "overflow stack". overhead 1. Resources in computing usually processing time or storage space consumed for purposes which are incidental to, but necessary to, the main one. Overheads are usually quantifiable "costs" of some kind. Examples: The overheads in running a business include the cost of heating the building. Keeping a program running all the time eliminates the overhead of loading and initialising it for each transaction. Turning a subroutine into inline code eliminates the call and return time overhead for each execution but introduces space overheads. 2.
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