increment

1 a process of becoming larger or longer or more numerous or more important; "the increase in unemployment"; "the growth of population" [syn: increase, growth] [ant: decrease, decrease]

2 the amount by which something increases; "they proposed an increase of 15 percent in the fare" [syn: increase] [ant: decrease]

English

Etymology

From Latin incrementum

Noun

1. The action of increasing or becoming greater.
2. The waxing of the moon.
3. The amount of increase.

Derived terms

• incremental

Translations

Verb

1. (transitive & intransitive) To increase by steps or by a step, especially by one.

Translations

• French: incrémenter
• Indonesian: menaikkan

An increment is an increase, either of some fixed amount, for example added regularly, or of a variable amount. For example, a salary may receive an annual increment. A decrease would rather be called a decrement.

Incremental may also refer to gradual change as opposed to massive, instant change.

Use in science and technology

Use in programming languages

Incrementing is of constant use in computer programming, such as in loops that iterate through a set of items one at a time.

For example, in JavaScript, the increment operator works like the following: x++ Where the decrement operator is: x-- In addition, the increment operator can be written both as x++ and ++x, with separate meanings. For example: var y = ++x is shorthand for: x = x+1 var y = x however, var y = x++ is shorthand for: var y = x x = x+1 --x instead of x-- follows similar behaviour.

See also

• Stride of an array
• Successor function
• Counting

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