dest

Dest is commonly used as an abbreviation for destination across various fields, platforms, and industries. It does not refer to a single, fixed concept, but rather to the target or endpoint of a process, route, or mapping in context.

In travel, logistics, and ticketing, dest typically denotes the destination city, airport, port, or country. Forms, itineraries, and shipping labels often include a dest field to specify where goods or passengers are headed. The shorthand helps standardize documentation and data entry across systems.

In computing and networking, dest is a frequent variable name or field representing the destination of a connection, packet, or data transfer. Examples include destination IP addresses, ports, or hostnames, as well as destination paths in file systems or URLs. In routing tables and network configurations, references to dest indicate where traffic should be sent or delivered.

In data processing and software development, dest is used in ETL pipelines, data models, and mappings to designate the target table, column, or dataset. You might see dest_table or dest_column used to distinguish the endpoint of a transformation from its source.

Other uses include documentation and diagrams where "dest" helps distinguish the goal of a flow or process from its source. Since dest is a generic shorthand, its exact meaning depends on the domain and the surrounding identifiers. Variants such as dst or destination are common, and the choice often reflects local conventions or programming style.