Brian Cryer's Glossary of IT Terms with Links

DEC

DEC

1. Digital Equipment Corporation. In the history of computing, a large and very influential computing company. DEC were acquired by Compaq (and later by Hewlett-Packard) and no longer exists as a corporate entity.

2. Abbreviation for Decimal, meaning base 10. The abbreviation dec is used to denote that a number is a base 10 number to distinguish it between hex, octal and bin (binary).

3. Abbreviation for December, the twelfth month in the year.

4. Decrement. To reduce a number by 1. Some software languages (for example Pascal/Delphi) have a Dec function which decrements its argument.

5. Abbreviation for Deceased, meaning dead or defunct.