shim (redirected from shims)

shim

A small piece of software that is added to an existing system program or protocol in order to provide some enhancement.

---

shim

1. a thin packing strip or washer often used with a number of similar washers or strips to adjust a clearance for gears, etc.

2. Physics a thin strip of magnetic material, such as soft iron, used to adjust a magnetic field

---

shim [shim]

(engineering)

In the manufacture of plywood, a long, narrow patch glued into the panel or cemented into the lumber core itself.

A thin piece of material placed between two surfaces to obtain a proper fit, adjustment, or alignment.

---

shim

A thin piece of wood, metal, or stone, usually tapered, which is inserted under one member so as to adjust its height; used in adjusting the height of one surface so that it is flush with another.

---

(jargon, memory management)

shim - A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired memory alignment or other addressing property. For example, the PDP-11 Unix linker, in split I&D (instructions and data) mode, inserts a two-byte shim at location 0 in data space so that no data object will have an address of 0 (and be confused with the C null pointer). See also loose bytes.