What is the difference in between “in-line” and “inline”

In the adjective sense, those are the very same words as alternative spellings. The one without a hyphen is more typical in computer-related cases, such as “an inline function”, while the one with a hyphen is, in my experience, more common in mechanical or making situations – “in-line engine”, “in-line manufacturing”.

The programs and related meanings have actually somewhat taken on a subtle separate significance of there own, where it describes some component or entity that could be defined independently and described from other locations rather being put where they are needed. An inline function, which I discussed above, is one that the compiler copies into the code everywhere it is needed, rather than making a function call – which is fairly expensive at run-time – and having the code sitting in just one place, ready to be called from somewhere else. This leads to its alternate verb significance, which only happens without a hyphen, which describes the procedure of taking something that was not initially specified to be inline and making it be so. “Inlining” is a process that compilers go through to optimise code, detecting functions that would perform better (at the expense of bigger executable files) if they were made inline.

It also has a special meaning in CSS, where it refers to elements that occur in the circulation of text rather than breaking the circulation of text. It's naturally an adjective there, as “inline component”, but elision for the sake of performance (or laziness) has actually caused it ending up being a noun. Rather than say “inline element”, individuals simply say “inline” instead.

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