Symbol (programming)
Datatype in programming / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A symbol in computer programming is a primitive data type whose instances have a human-readable form. Symbols can be used as identifiers. In some programming languages, they are called atoms.[1] Uniqueness is enforced by holding them in a symbol table. The most common use of symbols by programmers is to perform language reflection (particularly for callbacks), and the most common indirectly is their use to create object linkages.
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In the most trivial implementation, they are essentially named integers; e.g., the enumerated type in C language.