indirect jump

<programming>

A jump via an indirect address, i.e. the jump instruction contains the address of a memory location that contains the address of the next instruction to execute.

The location containing the address to jump to is sometimes called a vector.

Indirect jumps make normal code hard to understand because the jump target is a run-time property of the program that depends on the execution history. They are useful for, e.g. allowing user code to replace operating system code or setting up event handlers.

Last updated: 2010-01-01

Nearby terms:

indirect addressing ♦ indirection ♦ indirect jump ♦ induction ♦ inductive inference

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