menuitis /men`yoo-i:'tis/ n.
Notional disease suffered by software with an obsessively
simple-minded menu interface and no escape. Hackers find this
intensely irritating and much prefer the flexibility of
command-line or language-style interfaces, especially those
customizable via macros or a special-purpose language in which
one can encode useful hacks. See user-obsequious, drool-proof paper, WIMP environment, for the rest of us.
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mess-dos /mes-dos/ n.
[semi-obsolescent now that DOS is] Derisory term for MS-DOS.
Often followed by the ritual banishing "Just say No!" See MS-DOS. Most hackers (even many MS-DOS
hackers) loathed MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits
on application size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties
to IBMness and Microsoftness (see fear and loathing). Also
`mess-loss', `messy-dos', `mess-dog', `mess-dross', `mush-dos',
and various combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is
even sometimes called `Domestos' after a brand of toilet
cleanser.
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meta /me't*/ or /may't*/ or (Commonwealth) /mee't*/
adj.,pref.
[from analytic philosophy] One level of description up. A
metasyntactic variable is a variable in notation used to describe
syntax, and meta-language is language used to describe language.
This is difficult to explain briefly, but much hacker humor turns
on deliberate confusion between meta-levels. See hacker humor.
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meta bit n.
The top bit of an 8-bit character, which is on in character
values 128-255. Also called high
bit, alt bit, or (rarely)
hobbit. Some terminals and consoles
(see space-cadet
keyboard) have a META shift key. Others (including,
mirabile dictu, keyboards on IBM PC-class machines) have
an ALT key. See also bucky
bits.
Historical note: although in modern usage shaped by a universe
of 8-bit bytes the meta bit is invariably hex 80 (octal 0200),
things were different on earlier machines with 36-bit words and
9-bit bytes. The MIT and Stanford keyboards (see space-cadet keyboard) generated
hex 100 (octal 400) from their meta keys.
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variable, Next:MFTL,
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metasyntactic variable n.
A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever
thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of
things under discussion. The word foo
is the canonical example. To
avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or
other words like it as permanent names for anything. In
filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning
with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any
time.
Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are
variables in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc;
(2) they are variables whose values are often variables (as in
usages usages like "the value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and
bar"). However, it has been plausibly suggested that the real
reason for the term "metasyntactic variable" is that it sounds
good.
To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic
variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series
(used for related groups of variables or objects) and as
singletons. Here are a few common signatures:
foo, bar,
baz, quux,
quuux, quuuux...:
MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to
early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford),
baz dropped out of use for a while in
the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence
inserts qux before quux.
bazola, ztesch:
Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
foo, bar,
thud, grunt:
This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated
variables include gorp.
foo, bar,
fum:
This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC.
fred, jim, sheila, barney:
See the entry for fred. These tend
to be Britishisms.
corge, grault, flarp:
Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat:
Cambridge University (England).
shme
Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short
/e/.
foo, bar, baz, bongo
Yale, late 1970s.
spam
Python programmers.
snork
Brown University, early 1970s.
foo, bar,
zot
Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, wibble
New Zealand.
toto, titi, tata, tutu
France.
pippo, pluto, paperino
Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the
Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.
aap, noot, mies
The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to
learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.
oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork
These two series (which may be continued with other initial
consonents) are reportedly common in England, and said to go back
to Lewis Carroll.
Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide
currency.
Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for
discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great
Britain and the Commonwealth.