Index

An index is an indirect shortcut derived from and pointing into a greater volume of values, data, information or knowledge. Index may refer to:

Business

Publishing

Database index

A database index is a data structure that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a database table at the cost of additional writes and storage space to maintain the index data structure. Indexes are used to quickly locate data without having to search every row in a database table every time a database table is accessed. Indexes can be created using one or more columns of a database table, providing the basis for both rapid random lookups and efficient access of ordered records.

An index is a copy of select columns of data from a table that can be searched very efficiently that also includes a low-level disk block address or direct link to the complete row of data it was copied from. Some databases extend the power of indexing by letting developers create indices on functions or expressions. For example, an index could be created on upper(last_name), which would only store the upper case versions of the last_name field in the index. Another option sometimes supported is the use of partial indices, where index entries are created only for those records that satisfy some conditional expression. A further aspect of flexibility is to permit indexing on user-defined functions, as well as expressions formed from an assortment of built-in functions.

Index (typography)

The symbol ☞ is a punctuation mark, called an index, manicule (from the Latin root manus for "hand" and manicula for "little hand") or fist. Other names for the symbol include printer's fist, bishop's fist, digit, mutton-fist, hand, hand director, pointer, and pointing hand.

History

The symbol originates in scribal tradition of the medieval and Renaissance period, appearing in the margin of manuscripts to mark corrections or notes.

Manicules are first known to appear in the 12th century in handwritten manuscripts in Spain, and became common in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy with some very elaborate with shading and artful cuffs. Some were playful and elaborate, but others were as simple as "two squiggly strokes suggesting the barest sketch of a pointing hand" and thus quick to draw.

After the popularization of the printing press starting in the 1450s, the handwritten version continued in handwritten form as a means to annotate printed documents. Early printers using a type representing the manicule included Mathias Huss and Johannes Schabeler in Lyons in their 1484 edition of Paulus Florentinus' Breviarum totius juris canonici.

Cape

A cape is a sleeveless outer garment, which drapes the wearer's back, arms and chest, and fastens at the neck.

History

Capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon, and have had periodic returns to fashion, for example, in nineteenth-century Europe. Roman Catholic clergy wear a type of cape known as a ferraiolo, which is worn for formal events outside of a liturgical context. The cope is a liturgical vestment in the form of a cape. Capes are often highly decorated with elaborate embroidery. Capes remain in regular use as rain wear in various military units and police forces, for example in France. A gas cape was a voluminous military garment designed to give rain protection to someone wearing the bulky gas masks used in twentieth century wars.

Semantic distinction

In fashion, the word “cape” usually refers to a shorter garment and “cloak” to a full-length version of the different types of garment, though the two terms are sometimes used synonymously for full-length coverings. The fashion cape does not cover the front to any appreciable degree. In raingear, a cape is usually a long and roomy protective garment worn to keep one dry in the rain.

Cape (disambiguation)

Cape commonly refers to an article of clothing. For the geographical feature, see Cape (geography).

Cape or the Cape may also refer to:

Cape

Places

People

Art, entertainment, and media

Enterprises

Other uses

Cape (writ)

In old British law, a cape was a judicial writ concerning a plea of lands and tenements; so called, as most writs are, from the word which carried the chief intention of the writ.

The writ was divided into cape magnum, or the grand cape, and cape parvum, or the petit cape. While they were alike in their effect, as to taking hold of immovable things, they differed in the following circumstances: first, in that the cape magnum lay before, and the cape parvum after; second, cape magnum summoned the defendant to answer to the default, in addition to answering to the plaintiff, while cape parvum only summoned the defendant to answer to the default. It might have been called petit cape, not because of small force, but because it was contained in few words.

Cape magnum was defined in the Old Natura Brevium as follows:

Cape parvum was defined was thus definied, Ibid.

Cape ad valentiam, a species of cape magnum so called from the end to which it tends, was thus described,

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chambers, Ephraim, ed. (1728). "^{article name needed}". Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (first ed.). James and John Knapton, et al.