peek

peek n.,vt.  (and {poke}) The commands in most
   microcomputer BASICs for directly accessing memory contents at an
   absolute address; often extended to mean the corresponding
   constructs in any {HLL} (peek reads memory, poke modifies it).
   Much hacking on small, non-MMU micros consists of `peek'ing
   around memory, more or less at random, to find the location where
   the system keeps interesting stuff.  Long (and variably accurate)
   lists of such addresses for various computers circulate (see
   {{interrupt list, the}}).  The results of `poke's at these
   addresses may be highly useful, mildly amusing, useless but neat,
   or (most likely) total {lossage} (see {killer poke}).

   Since a {real operating system} provides useful, higher-level
   services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes on
   micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory
   groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is
   diagnostic of the {newbie}.  (Of course, OS kernels often have to
   do exactly this; a real C hacker would unhesitatingly, if
   unportably, assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and
   indirect through it.)