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Questions tagged [internals]

The internals tag denotes questions about how things work, as opposed to how to accomplish something specific. Of course, how something works underneath will have practical implications, but internals questions aren't about how to do something; rather, how to understand something.

If you understand how a database or parser or version control system actually works, you'll be better at using it. Internals questions seek this kind of inside knowledge.

660 questions
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Are Delegates more lightweight than classes?

I tried disassembling a C# created executable, but I couldn't come to a conclusion. What I'd like to know is that if for the CLR c#'s delegates are really special entities or just a compiler sugar? I ask this because I'm implementing a language that…
Waneck
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What are the inner workings of the Selenium waitFor mechanism?

I am trying to customize the behavior of Selenium's click command, (via user-extentions.js), by intercepting calls to doClick(locator). Basically I need to delay click actions whenever our application's "busy indicator" is being displayed. (Now the…
Chris Noe
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How does the PACKAGE argument to .Call work?

.Call seems rather poorly documented; ?.Call gives an explanation of the PACKAGE argument: PACKAGE: if supplied, confine the search for a character string .NAME to the DLL given by this argument (plus the conventional extension, ‘.so’, ‘.dll’,…
MichaelChirico
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List All Open Files

This is an add-on to another question found here. In short: I would like to list all of the open files on a system and retrieve their associated file names. If this is the wrong approach, or if there's another way, please give me a push in the…
mrduclaw
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What is the "identity pointer" before a TTypeInfo there for?

If you poke around enough in Delphi internals, you'll find something strange and apparently undocumented about TTypeInfo records generated by the compiler. If the PTypeInfo points to a TTypeInfo record at address X, at X - 4 you'll find the next 4…
Mason Wheeler
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what is unix/linux internals?

When somebody asks me about how strong you are in unix/linux internals ? What do they really mean ? Though i have some idea, i would like to hear from some experts that, what is really meant by unix/linux internals. My ideas are, i have to be…
user412125
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How does git track changes to files

For the longest time I thought git commits keep diffs of changed files and not copies. Any information I could find states the contrary. I conducted a little experiment: $ git init $ subl wtf Here I create a file with 99 999 lines, each of which…
ndnenkov
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findLoadedClass() returns null

According to the JVM spec, the class loader that initiates loading of a class is recorded as the initiating class loader by the JVM. Furthermore, according to the JavaDoc of ClassLoader#findLoadedClass() the method Returns the class with the given…
musiKk
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How does JVM implement the varargs?

I recently got interested in such a feature in Java, as functions with variable number of arguments. This is a very cool feature. But I'm interested: void method(int x, String.. args) { // Do something } How is this actually implemented on the…
SPIRiT_1984
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How do string literals in ruby bypass new/initialize, and is there a way to instrument this?

I was playing with an idea this afternoon, and stumbled into something I don't quite understand. Basically what I'm trying to achieve in this experiment is to somehow know every time a string is created (for later use, such as in some kind of DSL).…
Mason Cloud
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How are Perl's lexically-scoped pragmas implemented?

Pragmas, like autodie, according to the docs, are lexically scoped. { use autodie; .. .. } # Can die here Does this apply to all modules loaded with use? As far as I know, use is almost the same as: BEGIN { require autodie; …
snoofkin
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Why can I assign an undefined variable to itself in Ruby and get nil?

Possible Duplicate: Why a = a is nil in Ruby? There's a, shall we say, "odd phenomenon" in Ruby with using undefined variables. It's like this: # irb session follows # foo # undefined local variable or method 'foo' bar # same for…
Nathan Long
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Java - SAM type optimization

A working document describing the state of Project Lambda mentions the so-called SAM (single abstract method) types. As far as I know the current lambda proposal doesn't affect the runtime just the compiler by making possible automatic conversion…
Tamás
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What is ExternalRDDScan in the DAG?

What is the meaning of ExternalRDDScan in the DAG? The whole internet doesn't have an explanation for it.
Alon
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How is Key-Value Observing implemented internally?

I got answer about Foundation magic for this question: What's the most *simple* way to implement a plain data object which conforms key-value-observing? What's the magic? How it work internally? Because it's dangerous using framework which I can't…
eonil
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