The New Hacker's Dictionary

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Unix license fees, or with additional `mission-critical' features such as support for real-time programming. 6. v. To make an exact copy of something. "Let me clone that" might mean "I want to borrow that paper so I can make a photocopy" or "Let me get a copy of that file before you [2705]mung it".

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clone-and-hack coding n.

[DEC] Syn. [2709]case and paste.

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clover key n.

[Mac users] See [2713]feature key.

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clue-by-four

[Usenet: portmanteau, clue + two-by-four] The notional stick with which one whacks an aggressively clueless person. This term derives from a western American folk saying about training a mule "First, you got to hit him with a two-by-four. That's to get his attention." The clue-by-four is a close relative of the [2717]LART. Syn. `clue stick'. This metaphor is

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commonly elaborated; your editor once heard a hacker say "I strike you with the great sword Clue-Bringer!"

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clustergeeking /kluh'st*r-gee`king/ n.

[CMU] Spending more time at a computer cluster doing CS homework than most people spend breathing.

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co-lo /koh'loh`/ n.

[very common; first heard c.1995] Short for `co-location', used of a machine you own that is physically sited on the premises of an ISP in order to take advantage of the ISP's direct access to lots of network bandwidthm. Often in the phrases `co-lo box' or `co-lo machines'. Co-lo boxes are typically web and FTP servers remote-administered by their owners, who may seldom or never visit the actual site.

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coaster n.

1. Unuseable CD produced during failed attempt at writing to writeable or re-writeable CD media. Certainly related to the coaster-like shape of a CD, and the relative value of these failures. "I made a lot of coasters before I got

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a good CD." 2. Useless CDs received in the mail from the likes of AOL, MSN, CI$, Prodigy, ad nauseam.

In the U.K., `beermat' is often used in these senses.

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COBOL /koh'bol/ n.

[COmmon Business-Oriented Language] (Synonymous with [2730]evil.) A weak, verbose, and flabby language used by [2731]card wallopers to do boring mindless things on [2732]dinosaur mainframes. Hackers believe that all COBOL programmers are [2733]suits or [2734]code grinders, and no self-respecting hacker will ever admit to having learned the language. Its very name is seldom uttered without ritual expressions of disgust or horror. One popular one is Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous observation that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." (from "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective") See also [2735]fear and loathing, [2736]software rot.

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COBOL fingers /koh'bol fing'grz/ n.

Reported from Sweden, a (hypothetical) disease one might get from coding in COBOL. The language requires code verbose beyond all reason (see [2740]candygrammar); thus it is alleged that programming too much in COBOL causes one's fingers to wear down to stubs by the endless typing. "I refuse to type in all that source code again; it would give me COBOL fingers!"

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cobweb site n.

A World Wide Web Site that hasn't been updated so long it has figuratively grown cobwebs.

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code n.

The stuff that software writers write, either in source form or after translation by a compiler or assembler. Often used in opposition to "data", which is the stuff that code operates on. This is a mass noun, as in "How much code does it take to do a [2747]bubble sort?", or "The code is loaded at the high end of RAM." Anyone referring to software as "the software codes" is probably a [2748]newbie or a [2749]suit.

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code grinder n.

1. A [2753]suit-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength by banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages in RPG and other such unspeakable horrors. In its native habitat, the code grinder often removes the suit jacket to reveal an underplumage consisting of button-down shirt (starch optional) and a tie. In times of dire stress, the

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Node:code police, Next:[2769]codes, Previous:[2770]Code of the Geeks, Up:[2771]= C =

code police n.

[by analogy with George Orwell's `thought police'] A mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive [2772]weenies. "Dike out that goto or the code police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more common.

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codes n.

[scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who hack supercomputers and heavy-duty [2776]number-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 n.

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 new vgrind

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feature would require a codewalker to implement."

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coefficient of X n.

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 is [2783]fudge 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 using quotient emphasizes 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

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say `bogosity index'.

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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 the [2787]space-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' (see [2788]bang). Since the exclamation point looks a lot like an upside down Coke bottle, Motif hackers have begun referring to this keystroke as `cokebottle'. See also [2789]quadruple bucky.

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cold boot n.

See [2793]boot.

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COME FROM n.

A semi-mythical language construct dual to the `go to'; COME FROM <label> would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would quietly and [2797]automagically be transferred to the statement following the COME FROM. COME FROM was first proposed in R. Lawrence Clark's "A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming", which appeared in a 1973 [2798]Datamation issue (and was reprinted in the April 1984 issue of "Communications of the ACM"). This parodied the then-raging `structured programming' [2799]holy wars (see [2800]considered harmful). Mythically, some variants are the `assigned COME FROM' and the `computed COME FROM' (parodying some nasty control constructs in FORTRAN and some extended BASICs). Of course, multi-tasking (or non-determinism) could be implemented by having more than one COME FROM statement coming from the same label.

In some ways the FORTRAN DO looks like a COME FROM statement. After the terminating statement number/CONTINUE is reached, control continues at the statement following the DO. Some generous FORTRANs would allow arbitrary statements (other than CONTINUE) for the statement, leading to examples like: DO 10 I=1,LIMIT C imagine many lines of code here, leaving the C 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 of COME FROM statement 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 statement AT 100 would perform a COME FROM 100. It was intended strictly as a debugging aid, with dire consequences promised to anyone so deranged as