# Annotation Glossary

### A

allow-none

  NULL is OK, both for passing and for returning.

### E

element-type

  Generics and defining elements of containers and arrays.

### N

not nullable

  NULL must not be passed as the value in, out, in-out; or as a return value.

nullable

  NULL may be passed as the value in, out, in-out; or as a return value.

### O

optional

  NULL may be passed instead of a pointer to a location.

out

  Parameter for returning results. Default is transfer full.

out caller-allocates

  Out parameter, where caller must allocate storage.

### S

scope call

  The callback is valid only during the call to the method.

skip

  Exposed in C code, not necessarily available in other languages.

Stable

  The intention of a Stable interface is to enable arbitrary third parties to develop applications to these interfaces, release them, and have confidence that they will run on all minor releases of the product (after the one in which the interface was introduced, and within the same major release). Even at a major release, incompatible changes are expected to be rare, and to have strong justifications.

### T

transfer container

  The caller owns the data container, but not the data inside it.

transfer full

  The caller owns the data, and is responsible for free it.

transfer none

  The data is owned by the callee, which is responsible of freeing it.