In computer graphics, clamping is the process of limiting a position to an area. Unlike wrapping, clamping merely moves the point to the nearest available value.
To put clamping into perspective, pseudocode for clamping is as follows:
Uses
In general, clamping is used to restrict a value to a given range. For example, in OpenGL the glClearColor takes a GLclampf value which is a gl float value 'clamped' to the range [0,1].
One of the many uses of clamping in computer graphics is the placing of a detail inside a polygon—for example, a bullet hole on a wall. It can also be used with wrapping to create a variety of effects.
References
Clamping (graphics) Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA