line noise n.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to
electrical noise in a communications link, especially an RS-232
serial connection. Line noise may be induced by poor connections,
interference or crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms,
cosmic rays, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone
wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like
the results of line noise in sense 1. 3. Text that is
theoretically a readable text or program source but employs syntax
so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1 or 2. Yes,
there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is TECO;
it is often claimed that "TECO's input syntax is indistinguishable
from line noise." Other non-WYSIWYG editors, such as Multics
qed and Unix ed, in the hands of a real hacker, also
qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
INTERCAL.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to
electrical noise in a communications link, especially an RS-232
serial connection. Line noise may be induced by poor connections,
interference or crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms,
cosmic rays, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone
wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like
the results of line noise in sense 1. 3. Text that is
theoretically a readable text or program source but employs syntax
so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1 or 2. Yes,
there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is TECO;
it is often claimed that "TECO's input syntax is indistinguishable
from line noise." Other non-WYSIWYG editors, such as Multics
qed and Unix ed, in the hands of a real hacker, also
qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
INTERCAL.
Related:
- line noise n.
1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to
electrical noise in a communications link,
especially an RS-232 serial connection. Line noise... - frogging [University of Waterloo] v.
1. Partial corruption
of a text file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch,
as opposed to random events like line noise or media... - frogging: [University of Waterloo] v. 1. Partial corruption of a
text file or input stream by some bug or consistent glitch,
as opposed to random events like line noise or media... - Is that Line Noise or a "C" program
listing... - It's not line noise..
it's ALIEN INVADERS... - Line noise provided
by GTE... - one-liner wars: n. A game popular among hackers who code in the
language APL (see {write-only language} and {line noise}).
The objective is to see who can code the most interesting... - runes pl.n.
1. Anything that requires heavy wizardry
or black art to parse:
core dumps, JCL commands, APL, or code in a language... - TECO /tee'koh/ n.,v. obs.
1. [originally an acronym for
`[paper] Tape Editor and COrrector';
later, `Text Editor and COrrector'] n. A text editor...
From the same category:
- driver n.
1. The main loop of an event-processing
program;
the code that gets commands and dispatches them for... - ice n.
[coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by
William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels:
a contrived acronym for `Intrusion Countermeasure... - wheel wars n.
[Stanford University] A period in larval stage during which student hackers hassle each ot
to log each other out of the system,
delete each other's files, and otherwise wreak... - plan file n.
[Unix] On systems that support finger,
the `.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed... - block v.
[common; from process scheduling terminology
in OS theory] 1.
vi. To delay or sit idle while waiting for something...
