origin of "handle"

Not sure what I con contribute to the history of use of this specific term
(handle) for a non-moving reference to a possibly moving block of
storage. However, the concept of object tables for GC'ed systems goes back
somewhat farther. For example, for Smalltalk, developed mostly in 1970s,
early systems and the reference design of the so-called "blue book" were in
terms of an object table. I suspect the Smalltalkers borrowed these
implementation ideas from implementations of Lisp and related languages.

Coming the other way, operating systems and language run-time systems have
often provided things called "handles", to represent and mediate access to
resources that are somewhere else, notably (open) file handles. After all,
the term suggests a small thing attached to a large one, by means of which
one can both hold on to and manipulate the larger thing. In IBM-land such
would often be called "control blocks". Clearly terms like this often have
a flavor arising from a subculture.

In hope that this somehow contributes to answering your question ....

-- Eliot
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