In computer science, an offset within an array or other data structure object is an integer indicating the 'distance' from the beginning of the object to a given element or point, presumably in the same object. The concept of a distance is only valid if all elements of the object are the same size.

Example

Given an array of characters A containing "abcdef", one can say that the element containing the letter 'c' has an offset of 3 from the start of A.