= C =
codesn.
[scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who hack supercomputers and heavy-dutynumber-crunching, rare to unknown elsewhere (if you say "codes" to hackers outside scientific computing, their first association is likely to be "and cyphers").
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codewalker
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coefficient of X
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codes
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codewalkern.
A program component that traverses other programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in "This newvgrindfeature would require a codewalker to implement."
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coefficient of X
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cokebottle
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codewalker
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coefficient of Xn.
Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms `coefficient', `factor', `index of X', and `quotient'. They are often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle distinctions among them that convey information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing.
`Foo factor' and `foo quotient' tend to describe something for which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example isfudge factor. It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor", but usingquotientemphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering your own).
`Foo index' and `coefficient of foo' both tend to imply that foo is, if not strictly measurable, at least something that can be larger or smaller. Thus, you might refer to a paper or person as having a `high bogosity index', whereas you would be less likely to speak of a `high bogosity factor'. `Foo index' suggests that foo is a condensation of many quantities, as in the mundane cost-of-living index; `coefficient of foo' suggests that foo is a fundamental quantity, as in a coefficient of friction. The choice between these terms is often one of personal preference; e.g., some people might feel that bogosity is a fundamental attribute and thus say `coefficient of bogosity', whereas others might feel it is a combination of factors and thus say `bogosity index'.
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cokebottle
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cold boot
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coefficient of X
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cokebottle/kohk'bot-l/ n.
Any very unusual character, particularly one you can't type because it isn't on your keyboard. MIT people used to complain about the `control-meta-cokebottle' commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complained right back about the `escape-escape-cokebottle' commands at MIT. After the demise of thespace-cadet keyboard, `cokebottle' faded away as serious usage, but was often invoked humorously to describe an (unspecified) weird or non-intuitive keystroke command. It may be due for a second inning, however. The OSF/Motif window manager,mwm(1), has a reserved keystroke for switching to the default set of keybindings and behavior. This keystroke is (believe it or not) `control-meta-bang' (seebang). Since the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as `cokebottle'. See alsoquadruple bucky.
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cold boot
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COME FROM
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cokebottle
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cold bootn.
Seeboot.
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COME FROM
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comm mode
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cold boot
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COME FROMn.
A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to';COME FROM
In some ways the FORTRANDOlooks like aCOME FROMstatement. After the terminating statement number/CONTINUEis reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs would allow arbitrary statements (other thanCONTINUE) for the statement, leading to examples like:
DO 10 I=1,LIMITC imagine many lines of code here, leaving theC original DO statement lost in the spaghetti...WRITE(6,10) I,FROB(I)10 FORMAT(1X,I5,G10.4)
in which the trapdoor is just after the statement labeled 10. (This is particularly surprising because the label doesn't appear to have anything to do with the flow of control at all!)
While sufficiently astonishing to the unsuspecting reader, this form ofCOME FROMstatement isn't completely general. After all, control will eventually pass to the following statement. The implementation of the general form was left to Univac FORTRAN, ca. 1975 (though a roughly similar feature existed on the IBM 7040 ten years earlier). The statementAT 100would perform aCOME FROM 100. It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as to use it in production code. More horrible things had already been perpetrated in production languages, however; doubters need only contemplate theALTERverb inCOBOL.
COME FROMwas supported under its own name for the first time 15 years later, in C-INTERCAL (seeINTERCAL,retrocomputing); knowledgeable observers are still reeling from the shock.
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comm mode
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command key
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COME FROM
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comm mode/kom mohd/ n.
[ITS: from the feature supporting on-line chat; the term may spelled with one or two m's] Syn. fortalk mode.
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command key
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comment out
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comm mode
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command keyn.
[Mac users] Syn.feature key.
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comment out
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Commonwealth Hackish
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command key
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comment outvt.
To surround a section of code with comment delimiters or to prefix every line in the section with a comment marker; this prevents it from being compiled or interpreted. Often done when the code is redundant or obsolete, but is being left in the source to make the intent of the active code clearer; also when the code in that section is broken and you want to bypass it in order to debug some other part of the code. Comparecondition out, usually the preferred technique in languages (such asC) that make it possible.
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Commonwealth Hackish
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compact
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comment out
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Commonwealth Hackishn.
Hacker jargon as spoken in English outside the U.S., esp. in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like `char' and `soc', etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots innewsgroupnames (especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/).
Preferredmetasyntactic variables includeblurgle,eek,ook,frodo, andbilbo;wibble,wobble, and in emergencieswubble;flob,banana,tom,dick,harry,wombat,frog,fish,wombleand so on and on (seefoo, sense 4). Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes `-o-rama', `frenzy' (as in feeding frenzy), and `city' (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!").
All the generic differences within the anglophone world inevitably show themselves in the associated hackish dialects. The Greek letters beta and zeta are usually pronounced /bee't*/ and /zee't*/; meta may also be pronounced /mee't*/. Various punctuators (and even letters - Z is called `zed', not `zee') are named differently: most crucially, for hackish, where Americans use `parens', `brackets' and `braces' for (), [] and {}, Commonwealth English uses `brackets', `square brackets' and `curly brackets', though `parentheses' may be used for the first; the exclamation mark, `!', is called pling rather than bang and the pound sign, `#', is called hash; furthermore, the term `the pound sign' is understood to mean the pound currency symbol (of course).
See alsoattoparsec,calculator,chemist,console jockey,fish,go-faster stripes,grunge,hakspek,heavy metal,leaky heap,lord high fixer,loose bytes,muddie,nadger,noddy,psychedelicware,plingnet,raster blaster,RTBM,seggie,spod,sun lounge,terminal junkie,tick-list features,weeble,weasel,YABA, and notes or definitions underBad Thing,barf,bogus,bum,chase pointers,cosmic rays,crippleware,crunch,dodgy,gonk,hamster,hardwarily,mess-dos,nybble,proglet,root,SEX,tweak,womble, andxyzzy.
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compact
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compiler jock
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Commonwealth Hackish
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compactadj.
Of a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accretingfeatures andcruftthat don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans ofClassic Cmaintain that ANSI C is no longer compact).
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compiler jock
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compo
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compact
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compiler jockn.
Seejock(sense 2).
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compo
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compress
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compiler jock
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compon.
[demoscene] Finnish-originated slang for `competition'. Demo compos are held at ademoparty. The usual protocol is that several groups make demos for a compo, they are shown on a big screen, and then the party participants vote for the best one. Prizes (from sponsors and party entrance fees) are given. Standard compo formats includeintrocompos (4k or 64k demos), music compos, graphics compos, quickdemocompos (build a demo within 4 hours for example), etc.
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compress
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Compu$erve
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compo
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compress[Unix] vt.
When used without a qualifier, generally refers tocrunching of a file using a particular C implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost et al. and widely circulated viaUsenet; use ofcrunchitself in this sense is rare among Unix hackers. Specifically, compress is built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in "A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", Terry A. Welch, "IEEE Computer", vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8-19.
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Compu$erve
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computer confetti
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compress
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Compu$erven.
SeeCI$. Synonyms CompuSpend and Compu$pend are also reported.
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computer confetti
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computer geek
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computer confettin.
Syn.chad. Though this term is common, this use of punched-card chad is not a good idea, as the pieces are stiff and have sharp corners that could injure the eyes. GLS reports that he once attended a wedding at MIT during which he and a few other guests enthusiastically threw chad instead of rice. The groom later grumbled that he and his bride had spent most of the evening trying to get the stuff out of their hair.
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computer geek
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computron
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computer confetti
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computer geekn.
1. One who eats (computer) bugs for a living. One who fulfills all the dreariest negative stereotypes about hackers: an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. Cannot be used by outsiders without implied insult to all hackers; compare black-on-black vs. white-on-black usage of `nigger'. A computer geek may be either a fundamentally clueless individual or a proto-hacker inlarval stage. Also called `turbo nerd', `turbo geek'. See alsopropeller head,clustergeeking,geek out,wannabee,terminal junkie,spod,weenie. 2. Some self-described computer geeks use this term in a positive sense and protest sense 1 (this seems to have been a post-1990 development). For one such argument, see http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html. See alsogeek code.
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computron
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con
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computer geek
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computron/kom'pyoo-tron`/
n. 1. [common] A notional unit of computing power combining instruction speed and storage capacity, dimensioned roughly in instructions-per-second times megabytes-of-main-store times megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU Emacs, it doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. Seebitty box,Get a real computer!,toy,crank. 2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see alsobogon). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based on the physical fact that the molecules in a solid object move more rapidly as it is heated. It is argued that an object melts because the molecules have lost their information about where they are supposed to be (that is, they have emitted computrons). This explains why computers get so hot and require air conditioning; they use up computrons. Conversely, it should be possible to cool down an object by placing it in the path of a computron beam. It is believed that this may also explain why machines that work at the factory fail in the computer room: the computrons there have been all used up by the other hardware. (The popularity of this theory probably owes something to the "Warlock" stories by Larry Niven, the best known being "What Good is a Glass Dagger?", in which magic is fueled by an exhaustible natural resource called `mana'.)
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con
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computron
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conn.
[from SF fandom] A science-fiction convention. Not used of other sorts of conventions, such as professional meetings. This term, unlike many others imported from SF-fan slang, is widely recognized even by hackers who aren'tfans. "We'd been corresponding on the net for months, then we met face-to-face at a con."
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condition out
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condom
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con
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condition outvt.
To prevent a section of code from being compiled by surrounding it with a conditional-compilation directive whose condition is always false. Thecanonicalexamples of these directives are#if 0(or#ifdef notdef, though some find the latterbletcherous) and#endifin C. Comparecomment out.
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condom
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confuser
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condition out