[from the ASCII mnemonic ENQuire for 0000101] An on-line
convention for querying someone's availability. After opening a
talk mode connection to someone
apparently in heavy hack mode, one might type SYN SYN
ENQ? (the SYNs representing notional synchronization
bytes), and expect a return of ACK or
NAK depending on whether or not the
person felt interruptible. Compare ping, finger, and
the usage of FOO? listed under talk mode.
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EOF /E-O-F/ n.
[abbreviation, `End Of File'] 1. [techspeak] The out-of-band value returned by C's
sequential character-input functions (and their equivalents in
other environments) when end of file has been reached. This value
is usually -1 under C libraries postdating V6 Unix, but was
originally 0. DOS hackers think EOF is ^Z, and a few Amiga
hackers think it's ^\. 2. [Unix] The keyboard character (usually
control-D, the ASCII EOT (End Of Transmission) character) that is
mapped by the terminal driver into an end-of-file condition. 3.
Used by extension in non-computer contexts when a human is doing
something that can be modeled as a sequential read and can't go
further. "Yeah, I looked for a list of 360 mnemonics to post as a
joke, but I hit EOF pretty fast; all the library had was a JCL manual." See also EOL.
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EOL /E-O-L/ n.
[End Of Line] Syn. for newline,
derived perhaps from the original CDC6600 Pascal. Now rare, but
widely recognized and occasionally used for brevity. Used in the
example entry under BNF. See also EOF.