An application programming interface (API) is a specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables. An API specification can take many forms, including an International Standard such as POSIX, vendor documentation such as the Microsoft Windows API, the libraries of a programming language, e.g. Standard Template Library in C++ or Java API.
An API differs from an application binary interface (ABI) in that an API is source code based while an ABI is a binary interface. For instance POSIX is an API, while the Linux Standard Base is an ABI.
Read more about Application Programming Interface: Detailed Explanation, Web APIs, Implementations, Release Policies, APIs and Copyrights, API Examples, Language Bindings and Interface Generators
Famous quotes containing the words application and/or programming:
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)