quick-and-dirty adj.
[common] Describes a crock put
together under time or user pressure. Used esp. when you want to
convey that you think the fast way might lead to trouble further
down the road. "I can have a quick-and-dirty fix in place
tonight, but I'll have to rewrite the whole module to solve the
underlying design problem." See also kluge.
Node:quine, Next:quote chapter and verse,
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quine /kwi:n/ n.
[from the name of the logician Willard van Orman Quine, via
Douglas Hofstadter] A program that generates a copy of its own
source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest
possible quine in some given programming language is a common
hackish amusement. (We ignore some variants of BASIC in which a
program consisting of a single empty string literal reproduces
itself trivially.) Here is one classic quine:
((lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))
(quote
(lambda (x)
(list x (list (quote quote) x)))))
This one works in LISP or Scheme. It's relatively easy to
write quines in other languages such as Postscript which readily
handle programs as data; much harder (and thus more challenging!)
in languages like C which do not. Here is a classic C quine for
ASCII machines:
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main()
{printf(f,34,f,34,10);}%c";
main(){printf(f,34,f,34,10);}
For excruciatingly exact quinishness, remove the interior line
breaks. Here is another elegant quine in ANSI C:
#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");}
q(#define q(k)main(){return!puts(#k"\nq("#k")");})
Some infamous Obfuscated C Contest entries
have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways. There is an
amusing Quine
Home Page.
Node:quote chapter and
verse, Next:quotient,
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quote chapter and verse v.
[by analogy with the mainstream phrase] To cite a relevant
excerpt from an appropriate bible. "I
don't care if rn gets it wrong; `Followup-To:
poster' is explicitly permitted by RFC-1036. I'll quote chapter and verse if you
don't believe me." See also legalese, language lawyer, RTFS (sense 2).
Node:quotient, Next:quux, Previous:quote chapter and verse,
Up:= Q =
quotient n.
See coefficient of
X.
Node:quux, Next:qux, Previous:quotient, Up:=
Q =
quux /kwuhks/ n.
[Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb quuxo, quuxare,
quuxandum iri; noun form variously `quux' (plural `quuces',
anglicized to `quuxes') and `quuxu' (genitive plural is
`quuxuum', for four u-letters out of seven in all, using up all
the `u' letters in Scrabble).] 1. Originally, a metasyntactic variable like
foo and foobar. Invented by Guy Steele for precisely
this purpose when he was young and naive and not yet interacting
with the real computing community. Many people invent such words;
this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a
little. In an eloquent display of poetic justice, it has returned
to the originator in the form of a nickname. 2. interj. See foo; however, denotes very little disgust,
and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. 3. Guy
Steele in his persona as `The Great Quux', which is somewhat
infamous for light verse and for the `Crunchly' cartoons. 4. In
some circles, used as a punning opposite of `crux'. "Ah, that's
the quux of the matter!" implies that the point is not
crucial (compare tip of
the ice-cube). 5. quuxy: adj. Of or pertaining to a
quux.