basesaddress

Basesaddress is a term used in discussions of memory addressing to denote the base address of a memory region from which data are addressed. In most systems, addresses are computed as base address plus an offset, enabling access to individual elements within an array, a structure, or a mapped device region.

In programming, the block returned by a memory allocator has a base address equal to the first byte; pointers into the block are often expressed as base plus offset. This concept is central to pointer arithmetic in languages like C and C++. In executable formats, a base address is assigned to a module by the loader; relocation adjusts all addresses when the program is loaded at a non-default address. Position-independent code and address space layout randomization rely on shifting or disguising the actual base address to improve security.

In hardware and systems design, base addresses are used for memory-mapped I/O regions and for base address registers in some processors that control translation lookaside buffers or I/O space mapping.

The term basesaddress may appear as a variable name in source code or as a descriptive shorthand for the base-address concept; it is not a distinct standardized feature separate from base address and offset conventions. See also base address, offset, pointer, relocation, and ASLR.