fetches

Fetches is the plural form of fetch in English, generally referring to the act of retrieving something or the items retrieved. In everyday language, to fetch means to go after and bring back something, such as a dog fetching a ball or a person fetching a file from a cabinet. The term can describe multiple retrieved items or retrieval operations.

In computer science and engineering, fetches describe data or instructions retrieved from a source. In computer architecture, the fetch stage is the first phase of the instruction cycle, during which the processor reads the next instruction from memory. In modern CPUs, this step is often pipelined, overlapping with later stages. The word fetches can refer to successive retrievals during program execution.

Web development and APIs use the Fetch API to request resources across a network. The fetch function initiates an asynchronous operation and returns a promise that resolves to a response. Programs may perform several fetches to obtain multiple resources, coordinating them with promises, async/await, or streams.

In data management, a fetch operation retrieves rows or objects from a database or data store as part of a query or cursor iteration. The plural fetches can describe multiple retrievals performed in sequence or parallel.

Other uses include the general grammar terms: fetch is a verb; its past tense is fetched and its third-person singular present is fetches. The term also appears in idiomatic expressions such as fetching data or fetching a file.