Chapter 6

This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: <>. Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL. The abbreviations "l/r" and "o/c" stand for left/right and "open/close" respectively. Ordinary parentheticals provide some usage information.

!

Common: bang; pling; excl; shriek; ball-bat; . Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control.

"

Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; ; ; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime.

#

Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; , pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat.

$

Common: dollar; . Rare: currency symbol; buck; cash; string (from BASIC); escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money].

%

Common: percent; ; mod; grapes. Rare: [double-oh-seven].

&

Common: ; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++); andpersand; bitand; background (from sh(1)); pretzel; amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?]

'

Common: single quote; quote; . Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; ; .

( )

Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis; left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; <opening/closing parenthesis>; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane]; parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear.

*

Common: star; [splat]; . Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob (see glob); Nathan Hale.

+

Common: ; add. Rare: cross; [intersection].

,

Common: . Rare: ; [tail].

-

Common: dash; ; . Rare: [worm]; option; dak; bithorpe.

.

Common: dot; point; ; . Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot].

/

Common: slash; stroke; ; forward slash. Rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak; virgule; [slat].

:

Common: . Rare: dots; [two-spot].

;

Common: ; semi. Rare: weenie; [hybrid], pit-thwong.

< >

Common: <less/greater than>; bra/ket; l/r angle; l/r angle bracket; l/r broket. Rare: from/{into, towards}; read from/write to; suck/blow; comes-from/gozinta; in/out; crunch/zap (all from UNIX); tic/tac; [angle/right angle].

=

Common: ; gets; takes. Rare: quadrathorpe; [half-mesh].

?

Common: query; ; ques. Rare: whatmark; [what]; wildchar; huh; hook; buttonhook; hunchback.

@

Common: at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl; [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; rose; cabbage; .

V

Rare: [book].

[ ]

Common: l/r square bracket; l/r bracket; <opening/closing bracket>; bracket/unbracket. Rare: square/unsquare; [U turn/U turn back].

\

Common: backslash, hack, whack; escape (from C/UNIX); reverse slash; slosh; backslant; backwhack. Rare: bash; ; reversed virgule; [backslat].

^

Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; . Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal).

_

Common: ; underscore; underbar; under. Rare: score; backarrow; skid; [flatworm].

`

Common: backquote; left quote; left single quote; open quote; ; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; ; quasiquote.

{ }

Common: o/c brace; l/r brace; l/r squiggly; l/r squiggly bracket/brace; l/r curly bracket/brace; <opening/closing brace>. Rare: brace/unbrace; curly/uncurly; leftit/rytit; l/r squirrelly; [embrace/bracelet].

|

Common: bar; or; or-bar; v-bar; pipe; vertical bar. Rare: ; gozinta; thru; pipesinta (last three from UNIX); [spike].

~

Common: ; squiggle; twiddle; not. Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; [sqiggle (sic)].

The pronunciation of # as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad idea; Commonwealth Hackish has its own, rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace #; thus Britishers sometimes call # on a U.S.-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a # suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. There are more culture wars over the correct pronunciation of this character than any other, which has led to the ha ha only serious suggestion that it be pronounced `shibboleth' (see Judges 12:6 in an Old Testament or Tanakh).

The `uparrow' name for circumflex and `leftarrow' name for underline are historical relics from archaic ASCII (the 1963 version), which had these graphics in those character positions rather than the modern punctuation characters.

The `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare angle brackets).

Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The #, $, >, and & characters, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, # in many assembler-programming cultures, $ in the 6502 world, > at Texas Instruments, and & on the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and some Z80 machines). See also splat.

The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more and more like a serious misfeature as the use of international networks continues to increase (see software rot). Hardware and software from the U.S. still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII is the universal character set and that characters have 7 bits; this is a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to their own languages. Perversely, though, efforts to solve this problem by proliferating `national' character sets produce an evolutionary pressure to use a smaller subset common to all those in use.

Node:ASCII art, Next:ASCIIbetical order, Previous:ASCII, Up:= A =

ASCII art n.

The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly |, -, /, \, and +). Also known as `character graphics' or `ASCII graphics'; see also boxology. Here is a serious example:

o----)||(--+--|<----+ +---------o + D O L )||( | | | C U A I )||( +-->|-+ | +-\/\/-+--o - T C N )||( | | | | P E )||( +-->|-+--)---+--|(--+-o U )||( | | | GND T o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+

A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier circuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit

And here are some very silly examples:

|\/\/\/| ____/| ___ |\_/| ___ | | \ o.O| ACK! / \_ |` '| _/ \ | | =(_)= THPHTH! / \/ \/ \ | (o)(o) U / \ C _) (__) \/\/\/\ _____ /\/\/\/ | ,___| (oo) \/ \/ | / \/-------\ U (__) /____\ || | \ /---V `v'- oo ) / \ ||---W|| * * |--| || |`. |_/\

//-o-\\ ____---=======---____ ====___\ /.. ..\ /___==== Klingons rule OK! // ---\__O__/--- \\ \_\ /_/

There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard character names in the fashion of a rebus.

+--------------------------------------------------------+ | ^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^ B ^^^^^^^^^ | | ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | +--------------------------------------------------------+ " A Bee in the Carrot Patch "

Within humorous ASCII art, there is for some reason an entire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. Four of these are reproduced in the examples above, here are three more:

(__) (__) (__) (\/) ($$) (**) /-------\/ /-------\/ /-------\/ / | 666 || / |=====|| / | || * ||----|| * ||----|| * ||----|| ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ Satanic cow This cow is a Yuppie Cow in love

Finally, here's a magnificent example of ASCII art depicting an Edwardian train station in Dunedin, New Zealand:

.-. /___\ |___| |]_[| / I \ JL/ | \JL .-. i () | () i .-. |_| .^. /_\ LJ=======LJ /_\ .^. |_| ._/___\._./___\_._._._._.L_J_/.-. .-.\_L_J._._._._._/___\._./___\._._._ ., |-,-| ., L_J |_| [I] |_| L_J ., |-,-| ., ., JL |-O-| JL L_J%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%L_J JL |-O-| JL JL IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII|_|=======H=======|_|IIIIII_HH_'-'-'_HH_IIIIII_HH_ -------[]-------[]-------[_]----\.=I=./----[_]-------[]-------[]--------[]- _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ [_] []_/_L_J_\_[] [_] _/\_ ||\\_I_//|| _/\_ ||\ |__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__|_|_| _L_L_J_J_ |_|_|__| ||=/_|_\=|| |__| ||- |__| |||__|__||| |__[___]__--__===__--__[___]__| |||__|__||| |__| ||| IIIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIL___J__II__|_|__II__L___JIIIII[_]IIIII[_]IIIIIIII[_] \_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_[_]\II/[]\_\I/_/[]\II/[_]\_I_/ [_]\_I_/[_] \_I_/ [_] ./ \.L_J/ \L_J./ L_JI I[]/ \[]I IL_J \.L_J/ \L_J./ \.L_J | |L_J| |L_J| L_J| |[]| |[]| |L_J |L_J| |L_J| |L_J |_____JL_JL___JL_JL____|-|| |[]| |[]| ||-|_____JL_JL___JL_JL_____JL_J

There is a newsgroup, _alt.ascii-art_, devoted to this genre; however, see also warlording.

Node:ASCIIbetical order, Next:astroturfing, Previous:ASCII art, Up:= A =

ASCIIbetical order /as'kee-be'-t*-kl or'dr/ adj.,n.

Used to indicate that data is sorted in ASCII collated order rather than alphabetical order. This lexicon is sorted in something close to ASCIIbetical order, but with case ignored and entries beginning with non-alphabetic characters moved to the end. "At my video store, they used their computer to sort the videos into ASCIIbetical order, so I couldn't find `"Crocodile" Dundee' until I thought to look before `2001' and `48 HRS.'!"

Node:astroturfing, Next:atomic, Previous:ASCIIbetical order, Up:= A =

astroturfing n.

The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant `concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (astroturf is fake grass; hence the term). This term became common among hackers after it came to light in early 1998 that Microsoft had attempted to use such tactics to forestall the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust action against the company.

This backfired horribly, angering a number of state attorneys-general enough to induce them to go public with plans to join the Federal suit. It also set anybody defending Microsoft on the net for the accusation "You're just astroturfing!".

Node:atomic, Next:attoparsec, Previous:astroturfing, Up:= A =

atomic adj.

[from Gk. `atomos', indivisible] 1. Indivisible; cannot be split up. For example, an instruction may be said to do several things `atomically', i.e., all the things are done immediately, and there is no chance of the instruction being half-completed or of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey that an operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. "This routine locks the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically." 2. [primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error prevents a partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion, it must be "backed out," as the database must not be left in an inconsistent state.

Computer usage, in either of the above senses, has none of the connotations that `atomic' has in mainstream English (i.e. of particles of matter, nuclear explosions etc.).

Node:attoparsec, Next:AUP, Previous:atomic, Up:= A =

attoparsec n.

About an inch. `atto-' is the standard SI prefix for multiplication by 10^(-18). A parsec (parallax-second) is 3.26 light-years; an attoparsec is thus 3.26 * 10^(-18) light years, or about 3.1 cm (thus, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight equals about 1 inch/sec). This unit is reported to be in use (though probably not very seriously) among hackers in the U.K. See micro-.

Node:AUP, Next:autobogotiphobia, Previous:attoparsec, Up:= A =

AUP /A-U-P/

Abbreviation, "Acceptable Use Policy". The policy of a given ISP which sets out what the ISP considers to be (un)acceptable uses of its Internet resources.

Node:autobogotiphobia, Next:automagically, Previous:AUP, Up:= A =

autobogotiphobia /aw'toh-boh-got`*-foh'bee-*/

n. See bogotify.

Node:automagically, Next:avatar, Previous:autobogotiphobia, Up:= A =

automagically /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ adv.

Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable."

This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s in jargon and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s.

Node:avatar, Next:awk, Previous:automagically, Up:= A =

avatar n. Syn.

[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god] 1. Among people working on virtual reality and cyberspace interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. The term is sometimes used on MUDs. 2. [CMU, Tektronix] root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix machines on which the name of the superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who found the terms `root' and `superuser' unimaginative, and thought `avatar' might better impress people with the responsibility they were accepting.

Node:awk, Next:B5, Previous:avatar, Up:= A =

awk /awk/

1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the name derives from their initials). It is characterized by C-like syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing. See also Perl. 2. n. Editing term for an expression awkward to manipulate through normal regexp facilities (for example, one containing a newline). 3. vt. To process data using awk(1).

Node:= B =, Next:= C =, Previous:= A =, Up:The Jargon Lexicon

= B =

B5:

back door:

backbone cabal:

backbone site:

backgammon:

background:

backreference:

backronym:

backspace and overstrike:

backward combatability:

BAD:

Bad and Wrong:

Bad Thing:

bag on the side:

bagbiter:

bagbiting:

baggy pantsing:

balloonian variable:

bamf:

banana label:

banana problem:

banner ad:

banner site:

barn:

batbelt:

Befunge:

BI:

binary four:

bandwidth:

bang:

bang on:

bang path:

banner:

bar:

bare metal:

barf:

barfmail:

barfulation:

barfulous:

barney:

baroque:

BASIC:

batch:

bathtub curve:

baud:

baud barf:

baz:

bazaar:

bboard:

BBS:

BCPL:

beam:

beanie key:

beep:

beige toaster:

bells and whistles:

bells whistles and gongs:

benchmark:

Berkeley Quality Software:

berklix:

Berzerkeley:

beta:

BFI:

bible:

BiCapitalization:

B1FF:

biff:

Big Gray Wall:

big iron:

Big Red Switch:

Big Room:

big win:

big-endian:

bignum:

bigot:

bit:

bit bang:

bit bashing:

bit bucket:

bit decay:

bit rot:

bit twiddling:

bit-paired keyboard:

bitblt:

BITNET:

bits:

bitty box:

bixen:

bixie:

black art:

black hole:

black magic:

Black Screen of Death:

Black Thursday:

blammo:

blargh:

blast:

blat:

bletch:

bletcherous:

blink:

blinkenlights:

blit:

blitter:

blivet:

bloatware:

BLOB:

block:

block transfer computations:

Bloggs Family:

blow an EPROM:

blow away:

blow out:

blow past:

blow up:

BLT:

Blue Book:

blue box:

Blue Glue:

blue goo:

Blue Screen of Death:

blue wire:

blurgle:

BNF:

boa:

board:

boat anchor:

bob:

bodysurf code:

BOF:

BOFH:

bogo-sort:

bogometer:

BogoMIPS:

bogon:

bogon filter:

bogon flux:

bogosity:

bogotify:

bogue out:

bogus:

Bohr bug:

boink:

bomb:

bondage-and-discipline language:

bonk/oif:

book titles:

boot:

Borg:

borken:

bot:

bot spot:

bottom feeder:

bottom-up implementation:

bounce:

bounce message:

boustrophedon:

box:

boxed comments:

boxen:

boxology:

bozotic:

BQS:

brain dump:

brain fart:

brain-damaged:

brain-dead:

braino:

branch to Fishkill:

bread crumbs:

break:

break-even point:

breath-of-life packet:

breedle:

Breidbart Index:

bring X to its knees:

brittle:

broadcast storm:

brochureware:

broken:

broken arrow:

BrokenWindows:

broket:

Brooks's Law:

brown-paper-bag bug:

browser:

BRS:

brute force:

brute force and ignorance:

BSD:

BSOD:

BUAF:

BUAG:

bubble sort:

bucky bits:

buffer chuck:

buffer overflow:

bug:

bug-compatible:

bug-for-bug compatible:

bug-of-the-month club:

buglix:

bulletproof:

bullschildt:

bum:

bump:

burble:

buried treasure:

burn-in period:

burst page:

busy-wait:

buzz:

BWQ:

by hand:

byte:

byte sex:

bytesexual:

Bzzzt! Wrong.:

Node:B5, Next:back door, Previous:awk, Up:= B =

B5 //

[common] Abbreviation for "Babylon 5", a science-fiction TV series as revered among hackers as was the original Star Trek.

Node:back door, Next:backbone cabal, Previous:B5, Up:= B =

back door n.

[common] A hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a `wormhole'. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb.

Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.

Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.

The talk that suggested this truly moby hack was published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", "Communications of the ACM 27", 8 (August 1984), pp. 761-763 (text available at http://www.acm.org/classics). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one late-night login across the network by someone using the login name `kt'.

Node:backbone cabal, Next:backbone site, Previous:back door, Up:= B =

backbone cabal n.

A group of large-site administrators who pushed through the Great Renaming and reined in the chaos of Usenet during most of the 1980s. During most of its lifetime, the Cabal (as it was sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost obligatory for anyone privy to their secrets to respond "There is no Cabal" whenever the existence or activities of the group were speculated on in public.

The result of this policy was an attractive aura of mystery. Even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following a bitter internal catfight, many people believed (or claimed to believe) that it had not actually disbanded but only gone deeper underground with its power intact.

This belief became a model for various paranoid theories about various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over the Usenet or Internet. These paranoias were later satirized in ways that took on a life of their own. See Eric Conspiracy for one example.

See NANA for the subsequent history of "the Cabal".

Node:backbone site, Next:backgammon, Previous:backbone cabal, Up:= B =

backbone site n.,obs.

Formerly, a key Usenet and email site, one that processes a large amount of third-party traffic, especially if it is the home site of any of the regional coordinators for the Usenet maps. Notable backbone sites as of early 1993, when this sense of the term was beginning to pass out of general use due to wide availability of cheap Internet connections, included _uunet_ and the mail machines at Rutgers University, UC Berkeley, DEC's Western Research Laboratories, Ohio State University, and the University of Texas. Compare rib site, leaf site.

[1996 update: This term is seldom heard any more. The UUCP network world that gave it meaning has nearly disappeared; everyone is on the Internet now and network traffic is distributed in very different patterns. Today one might see references to a `backbone router' instead --ESR]

Node:backgammon, Next:background, Previous:backbone site, Up:= B =

backgammon

See bignum (sense 3), moby (sense 4), and pseudoprime.

Node:background, Next:backreference, Previous:backgammon, Up:= B =

background n.,adj.,vt.

[common] To do a task `in background' is to do it whenever foreground matters are not claiming your undivided attention, and `to background' something means to relegate it to a lower priority. "For now, we'll just print a list of nodes and links; I'm working on the graph-printing problem in background." Note that this implies ongoing activity but at a reduced level or in spare time, in contrast to mainstream `back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative work). Compare amp off, slopsucker.