line starve [MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this).

line starve

[MIT] 1. vi. To feed paper through a printer
the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do this). On a
display terminal, to move the cursor up to the previous line of the
screen. "To print `X squared', you just output `X', line starve,
`2', line feed." (The line starve causes the `2' to appear on the
line above the `X', and the line feed gets back to the original
line.) 2. n. A character (or character sequence) that causes a
terminal to perform this action. ASCII 0011010, also called SUB or
control-Z, was one common line-starve character in the days before
microcomputers and the X3.64 terminal standard. Today, the term
might be used for the ISO reverse line feed character 0x8D. Unlike
`line feed', `line starve' is not standard ASCII
terminology. Even among hackers it is considered a bit silly.
3. [proposed] A sequence such as \c (used in System V echo, as well
as nroff and troff) that suppresses a newline