From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):
SNAP
<language> 1. An early (IBM 360?) interpreted
text-processing language for beginners, close to basic
English.
["Computer Programming in English", M.P. Barnett, Harcourt
Brace 1969].
2. ["Some Proposals for SNAP, A Language with Formal Macro
Facilities", R.B. Napper, Computer J 10(3):231-243, 1967].
[Same as 1?]
(2006-05-27)
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):
snap
1. <programming> To remove indirection, e.g. by replacing a
pointer to a pointer with a pointer to the final target (see
chase pointers).
The underlying metaphor may be a rubber band stretched through
a number of points; if you release it from the intermediate
points, it snaps to a straight line from first to last.
Often a trampoline performs an error check once and then
snaps the pointer that invoked it so subsequent calls will
bypass the trampoline (and its one-shot error check). In this
context one also speaks of "snapping links". For example, in
a Lisp implementation, a function interface trampoline might
check to make sure that the caller is passing the correct
number of arguments; if it is, and if the caller and the
callee are both compiled, then snapping the link allows that
particular path to use a direct procedure-call instruction
with no further overhead.
(2006-05-27)
2. <operating system> snap dump.
(2006-05-27)