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relative address Last modified: Thursday, March 28, 2002

An address specified by indicating its distance from another address, called the base address. For example, a relative address might be B+15, B being the base address and 15 the distance (called the offset). There are two types of addressing: relative addressing and absolute addressing. In absolute addressing, you specify the actual address (called the absolute address ) of a memory location. Relative and absolute addressing are used in a variety of circumstances. In programming, you can use either mode to identify locations in main memory or on mass storage devices. In spreadsheet applications, you can use either mode to designate a particular cell.