The Jargon File by Eric S. Raymond (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

tripping over legalisms (see [4341]legalese). Of a person, someone whose directions are incomprehensible and

vague, but who nevertheless has the expectation that you will solve

the problem using the specific method he/she has in mind.

Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling

errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often

make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different.

Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood for `Damn

Warren's Infernal Machine!'.

In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command

interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed

delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup

files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to

delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It

happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully

reported $ not found, assuming you meant 'delete '. It then started

to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it

with a [4342]Vulcan nerve pinch after only a half dozen or so files

were lost.

The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to

Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his

workstation, and then type delete *$ twice.

DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex

program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction

the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program correctness

were in vogue, there were also jokes about `DWIMC' (Do What I Mean,

Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The

Right Thing); see [4343]Right Thing.

Node:dynner, Next:[4344]earthquake, Previous:[4345]DWIM, Up:[4346]= D

=

dynner /din'r/ n.

32 bits, by analogy with [4347]nybble and [4348]byte. Usage: rare and

extremely silly. See also [4349]playte, [4350]tayste, [4351]crumb.

General discussion of such terms is under [4352]nybble.

Node:= E =, Next:[4353]= F =, Previous:[4354]= D =, Up:[4355]The

Jargon Lexicon

= E =

[4356]earthquake:

[4357]Easter egg:

[4358]Easter egging:

[4359]eat flaming death:

[4360]EBCDIC:

[4361]echo:

[4362]ECP:

[4363]ed:

[4364]egosurf:

[4365]eighty-column mind:

[4366]El Camino Bignum:

[4367]elder days:

[4368]elegant:

[4369]elephantine:

[4370]elevator controller:

[4371]elite:

[4372]ELIZA effect:

[4373]elvish:

[4374]EMACS:

[4375]email:

[4376]emoticon:

[4377]EMP:

[4378]empire:

[4379]engine:

[4380]English:

[4381]enhancement:

[4382]ENQ:

[4383]EOF:

[4384]EOL:

[4385]EOU:

[4386]epoch:

[4387]epsilon:

[4388]epsilon squared:

[4389]era the:

[4390]Eric Conspiracy:

[4391]Eris:

[4392]erotics:

[4393]error 33:

[4394]eurodemo:

[4395]evil:

[4396]evil and rude:

[4397]Evil Empire:

[4398]exa-:

[4399]examining the entrails:

[4400]EXCH:

[4401]excl:

[4402]EXE:

[4403]exec:

[4404]exercise left as an:

[4405]Exon:

[4406]Exploder:

[4407]exploit:

[4408]external memory:

[4409]eye candy:

[4410]eyeball search:

Node:earthquake, Next:[4411]Easter egg, Previous:[4412]dynner,

Up:[4413]= E =

earthquake n.

[IBM] The ultimate real-world shock test for computer hardware.

Hackish sources at IBM deny the rumor that the Bay Area quake of 1989

was initiated by the company to test quality-assurance procedures at

its California plants.

Node:Easter egg, Next:[4414]Easter egging, Previous:[4415]earthquake,

Up:[4416]= E =

Easter egg n.

[from the custom of the Easter Egg hunt observed in the U.S. and many

parts of Europe] 1. A message hidden in the object code of a program

as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing

the code. 2. A message, graphic, or sound effect emitted by a program

(or, on a PC, the BIOS ROM) in response to some undocumented set of

commands or keystrokes, intended as a joke or to display program

credits. One well-known early Easter egg found in a couple of OSes

caused them to respond to the command make love with not war?. Many

personal computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM,

including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations,

snatches of music, and (in one case) graphics images of the entire

development team.

Node:Easter egging, Next:[4417]eat flaming death,

Previous:[4418]Easter egg, Up:[4419]= E =

Easter egging n.

[IBM] The act of replacing unrelated components more or less at random

in hopes that a malfunction will go away. Hackers consider this the

normal operating mode of [4420]field circus techs and do not love them

for it. See also the jokes under [4421]field circus. Compare

[4422]shotgun debugging.

Node:eat flaming death, Next:[4423]EBCDIC, Previous:[4424]Easter

egging, Up:[4425]= E =

eat flaming death imp.

A construction popularized among hackers by the infamous [4426]CPU

Wars comic; supposedly derive from a famously turgid line in a

WWII-era anti-Nazi propaganda comic that ran "Eat flaming death,

non-Aryan mongrels!" or something of the sort (however, it is also

reported that the Firesign Theatre's 1975 album "In The Next World,

You're On Your Own" a character won the right to scream "Eat flaming

death, fascist media pigs" in the middle of Oscar night on a game

show; this may have been an influence). Used in humorously overblown

expressions of hostility. "Eat flaming death, [4427]EBCDIC users!"

Node:EBCDIC, Next:[4428]echo, Previous:[4429]eat flaming death,

Up:[4430]= E =

EBCDIC /eb's-dik/, /eb'see`dik/, or /eb'k-dik/ n.

[abbreviation, Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code] An

alleged character set used on IBM [4431]dinosaurs. It exists in at

least six mutually incompatible versions, all featuring such delights

as non-contiguous letter sequences and the absence of several ASCII

punctuation characters fairly important for modern computer languages

(exactly which characters are absent varies according to which version

of EBCDIC you're looking at). IBM adapted EBCDIC from [4432]punched

card code in the early 1960s and promulgated it as a customer-control

tactic (see [4433]connector conspiracy), spurning the already

established ASCII standard. Today, IBM claims to be an open-systems

company, but IBM's own description of the EBCDIC variants and how to

convert between them is still internally classified top-secret,

burn-before-reading. Hackers blanch at the very name of EBCDIC and

consider it a manifestation of purest [4434]evil. See also [4435]fear

and loathing.

Node:echo, Next:[4436]ECP, Previous:[4437]EBCDIC, Up:[4438]= E =

echo [FidoNet] n.

A [4439]topic group on [4440]FidoNet's echomail system. Compare

[4441]newsgroup.

Node:ECP, Next:[4442]ed, Previous:[4443]echo, Up:[4444]= E =

ECP /E-C-P/ n.

See [4445]spam and [4446]velveeta.

Node:ed, Next:[4447]egosurf, Previous:[4448]ECP, Up:[4449]= E =

ed n.

"ed is the standard text editor." Line taken from original the

[4450]Unix manual page on ed, an ancient line-oriented editor that is

by now used only by a few [4451]Real Programmers, and even then only

for batch operations. The original line is sometimes uttered near the

beginning of an emacs vs. vi holy war on [4452]Usenet, with the (vain)

hope to quench the discussion before it really takes off. Often

followed by a standard text describing the many virtues of ed (such as

the small memory [4453]footprint on a Timex Sinclair, and the

consistent (because nearly non-existent) user interface).

Node:egosurf, Next:[4454]eighty-column mind, Previous:[4455]ed,

Up:[4456]= E =

egosurf vi.

To search the net for your name or links to your web pages. Perhaps

connected to long-established SF-fan slang `egoscan', to search for

one's name in a fanzine.

Node:eighty-column mind, Next:[4457]El Camino Bignum,

Previous:[4458]egosurf, Up:[4459]= E =

eighty-column mind n.

[IBM] The sort said to be possessed by persons for whom the transition

from [4460]punched card to tape was traumatic (nobody has dared tell

them about disks yet). It is said that these people, including

(according to an old joke) the founder of IBM, will be buried `face

down, 9-edge first' (the 9-edge being the bottom of the card). This

directive is inscribed on IBM's 1402 and 1622 card readers and is

referenced in a famous bit of doggerel called "The Last Bug", the

climactic lines of which are as follows:

He died at the console

Of hunger and thirst.

Next day he was buried,

Face down, 9-edge first.

The eighty-column mind was thought by most hackers to dominate IBM's

customer base and its thinking. This only began to change in the

mid-1990s when IBM began to reinvent itself after the triumph of the

[4461]killer micro. See [4462]IBM, [4463]fear and loathing, [4464]card

walloper. A copy of "The Last Bug" lives on the the GNU site at

[4465]http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.html.

Node:El Camino Bignum, Next:[4466]elder days,

Previous:[4467]eighty-column mind, Up:[4468]= E =

El Camino Bignum /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n.

The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco

peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City;

many portions of the old road are still intact. Navigation on the San

Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which

defines [4469]logical north and south even though it isn't really

north-south in many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford

University and so is familiar to hackers.

The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ahl'/) means

royal'; El Camino Real isthe royal road'. In the FORTRAN language,

a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant

digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger floating-point

number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other

languages have similar `real' types).

When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a

long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started

calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the hacker was

told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `El

Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See [4470]bignum.)

[GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was in

fact himself --ESR]

In recent years, the synonym `El Camino Virtual' has been reported as

an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley. Mathematically

literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard to refer to some

major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as "El Camino

Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection is located

near Moffett Field - where they keep all those complex planes.

Node:elder days, Next:[4471]elegant, Previous:[4472]El Camino Bignum,

Up:[4473]= E =

elder days n.

The heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the

[4474]PDP-10, [4475]TECO, [4476]ITS, and the ARPANET. This term has

been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic

"The Lord of the Rings". Compare [4477]Iron Age; see also [4478]elvish

and [4479]Great Worm.

Node:elegant, Next:[4480]elephantine, Previous:[4481]elder days,

Up:[4482]= E =

elegant adj.

[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power, and a

certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than `clever',

`winning', or even [4483]cuspy.

The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry,

probably best known for his classic children's book "The Little

Prince", was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best

definition of engineering elegance when he said "A designer knows he

has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but

when there is nothing left to take away."

Node:elephantine, Next:[4484]elevator controller,

Previous:[4485]elegant, Up:[4486]= E =

elephantine adj.

Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous [4487]hogs

(owing perhaps to poor design founded on [4488]brute force and

ignorance) and exceedingly [4489]hairy in source form. An elephantine

program may be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke

about being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the

same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme cases,

hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or perform

expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the offending program.

Usage: semi-humorous. Compare `has the elephant nature' and the

somewhat more pejorative [4490]monstrosity. See also

[4491]second-system effect and [4492]baroque.

Node:elevator controller, Next:[4493]elite,

Previous:[4494]elephantine, Up:[4495]= E =

elevator controller n.

An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like [4496]toaster

(which superseded it). During one period (1983-84) in the

deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C standardization committee) this was

the canonical example of a really stupid, memory-limited computation

environment. "You can't require printf(3) to be part of the default

runtime library -- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"

Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides

of several [4497]holy