In computer science, an offset within an array or other data structure object is an integer indicating the distance (displacement) from the beginning of the object up until a given element or point, presumably within the same object. The concept of a distance is only valid if all elements of the object are the same size (typically given in bytes or words). Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Computer Science Open Directory Project: Computer Science Downloadable Science and Computer Science books Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Belief that title science in computer science is inappropriate nacho Categories: Computer science ... In computer programming, an array, also known as a vector or list, is one of the simplest data structures. ... A binary tree, a simple type of branching linked data structure. ... In computer science, the term integer is used to refer to any data type which can represent some subset of the mathematical integers. ... A byte is commonly used as a unit of storage measurement in computers, regardless of the type of data being stored. ... In computing, word is a term for the natural unit of data used by a particular computer design. ...

In computer engineering and low-level programming (such as assembly language), an offset usually denotes the number of address locations added to a base address in order to get to a specific absolute address. In this meaning of offset, only the basic address unit, usually the 8-bit byte, is used to specify the offset's size. Computer engineering (also sometimes called computer systems engineering) is a specialised discipline that combines [[electrical engineering] and [computer science]. A little-known subdivision is the study of [computer engineering technology], which studies the techniques and applications of computer engineering with less emphasis on the mathematical and scientific theory. ... Assembly language or simply assembly is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. ... In computing, a base address denotes a memory address serving as a reference point (base) for other addresses. ... An absolute address in computing is the precise indication of a memory location without the use of any intermediate reference. ... A byte is commonly used as a unit of storage measurement in computers, regardless of the type of data being stored. ...

For example, given an array of characters A, containing abcdef, one can say that the element containing the letter 'c' has an offset of 2 from the start of A.