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Reference.org
Cross-reference
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Look up
cross-reference
in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The term cross-reference (abbreviation: xref) can refer to either:
An instance within a
document
which refers to related information elsewhere in the same document. In both printed and online dictionaries cross-references are important because they form a network structure of relations existing between different parts of data, dictionary-internal as well as dictionary external.
In an
index
, a cross-reference is often denoted by
See also
. For example, under the term
Albert Einstein
in the index of a book about Nobel Laureates, there may be the cross-reference
See also: Einstein, Albert
.
In
hypertext
, cross-references take the form of "live" references within the text that, when activated by
mouse click
,
touch
, voice command or
other means
, immediately makes available the referenced content, which might be a different part of the same document, or another document entirely.
In programming, "cross-referencing" means the listing of every file name and line number where a given
named identifier
occurs within the program's
source tree
.
In a
relational database management system
, a table can have an xref as prefix or suffix to indicate it is a
cross-reference table
that joins two or more tables together via
primary key
.