| Noun | 1. | descriptor - the phonological or orthographic sound or appearance of a word that can be used to describe or identify something; "the inflected forms of a word can be represented by a stem and a list of inflections to be attached" |
| 2. | descriptor - a piece of stored information that is used to identify an item in an information storage and retrieval system |
| (operating system) | descriptor - An integer, string or other small data
value which refers to one of several objects allocated to a
program by the operating system, usually the kernel. A
common example is a Unix file descriptor which is a small
integer that identifies an I/O channel. Another example is a
reference to an area of memory (e.g. shared memory). Compare capability. |