Definition: footprint

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

footprint
     n : a mark of a foot or shoe on a surface; a clue that someone
         was present; "the police made casts of the footprints in
         the soft earth outside the window" [syn: footmark, step]

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Footprint \Foot"print`\, n.
   The impression of the foot; a trace or footmark; as,
   ``Footprints of the Creator.''

Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (2003-OCT-10)

footprint

   1. <jargon, hardware> The floor or desk area taken up by a
   piece of hardware.

   2.  The amount of disk or RAM taken up by
   a program or file.

   3. (IBM) The audit trail left by a crashed program (often
   "footprints").

   See also toeprint.

   [Jargon File]

   (1995-04-25)

Source: Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

footprint n. 1. The floor or desk area taken up by a piece of hardware.
   2. [IBM] The audit trail (if any) left by a crashed program (often in
   plural, `footprints'). See also toeprint. 3. "RAM footprint": The
   minimum amount of RAM which an OS or other program takes; this figure
   gives one an idea of how much will be left for other applications. How
   actively this RAM is used is another matter entirely. Recent tendencies
   to featuritis and software bloat can expand the RAM footprint of an OS
   to the point of making it nearly unusable in practice. [This problem is,
   thankfully, limited to operating systems so stupid that they don't do
   virtual memory - ESR]