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gross inadequacies and performance penalties in the OS interface) all interesting applications are ill-behaved.
See also {bare metal}. Oppose {well-behaved}, compare {PC-ism}. See {mess-dos}.
:IMHO: // [from SF fandom via USENET; abbreviation for `In My Humble Opinion'] "IMHO, mixed-case C
names should be avoided, as mistyping something in the wrong case can cause hard-to-detect errors --- and
they look too Pascalish anyhow." Also seen in variant forms such as IMNSHO (In My Not-So-Humble
Opinion) and IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion).
:Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: [USENET] prov. Since USENET first got off the ground in 1980-81,
it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the
{signal-to-noise ratio} of USENET has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to
predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of
these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent Death Of The Net
Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the {S/N ratio} or the
huge and steadily increasing volume.
:in the extreme: adj. A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for example, `obscure in the
extreme' under {obscure}, and compare {highly}.
:incantation: n. Any particularly arbitrary or obscure command that one must mutter at a system to attain a
desired result. Not used of passwords or other explicit security features. Especially used of tricks that are so
poorly documented they must be learned from a {wizard}. "This compiler normally locates initialized data in
the data segment, but if you {mutter} the right incantation they will be forced into text space."
:include: vt. [USENET] 1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically with attribution to
the source) in a reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response. See the the discussion of
inclusion styles under "Hacker Writing Style". 2. [from {C}] `#include <disclaimer.h>' has appeared in {sig
block}s to refer to a notional `standard {disclaimer} file'.
:include war: n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a discussion {thread}, a practice that tends to annoy
readers. In a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as USENET, this can lead to {flame}s and the urge to
start a {kill file}.
:indent style: [C programmers] n. The rules one uses to indent code in a readable fashion; a subject of {holy
wars}. There are four major C indent styles, described below; all have the aim of making it easier for the
reader to visually track the scope of control constructs. The significant variable is the placement of `{' and `}'
with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and the guard or controlling statement (`if', `else', `for', `while', or
`do') on the block, if any.
`K&R style' --- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples in {K&R} are formatted this way.
Also called `kernel style' because the UNIX kernel is written in it, and the `One True Brace Style' (abbrev.
1TBS) by its partisans. The basic indent shown here is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; four are
occasionally seen, but are much less common.
if (cond) { <body> }
`Allman style' --- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is
sometimes called `BSD style'). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and Algol. Basic indent per level
shown here is eight spaces, but four is just as common (esp. in C++ code).
if (cond) { <body> }
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`Whitesmiths style' --- popularized by the examples that came with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C
compiler. Basic indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four is occasionally seen.
if (cond) { <body> }
`GNU style' --- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software Foundation code, and just about
nowhere else. Indents are always four spaces per level, with `{' and `}' halfway between the outer and inner
indent levels.
if (cond) { <body> }
Surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles to be the most common, with about equal mind
shares. K&R/1TBS used to be nearly universal, but is now much less common (the opening brace tends to get
lost against the right paren of the guard part in an `if' or `while', which is a {Bad Thing}). Defenders of 1TBS
argue that any putative gain in readability is less important than their style's relative economy with vertical
space, which enables one to see more code on one's screen at once. Doubtless these issues will continue to be
the subject of {holy wars}.
:index: n. See {coefficient of X}.
:infant mortality: n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at large; this term is
possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a
machine's time since power-up (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in
I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile).
Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often
referred to as `infant mortality' problems (or, occasionally, as `sudden infant death syndrome'). See {bathtub
curve}, {burn-in period}.
:infinite: adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very loosely as in: "This program
produces infinite garbage." "He is an infinite loser." The word most likely to follow `infinite', though, is
{hair} (it has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair). These uses are abuses of
the word's mathematical meaning. The term `semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some
resource, is also heard. "This compiler is taking a semi-infinite amount of time to optimize my program." See
also {semi}.
:infinite loop: n. One that never terminates (that is, the machine {spin}s or {buzz}es forever and goes
{catatonic}). There is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast
machine: "The Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2 seconds!"
:infinity: n. 1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory
location, data type, whatever). 2. `minus infinity': The smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the
simple negation of plus infinity. In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2^(N-1) - 1 but minus
infinity is - (2^(N-1)), not -(2^(N-1) - 1). Note also that this is different from "time T equals minus infinity",
which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.
:initgame: /in-it'gaym/ [IRC] n. An {IRC} version of the venerable trivia game "20 questions", in which one
user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named entity, and the others on the channel
ask yes or no questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a courtesy, the one picking
the initials starts by providing a 4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, life-status, reality-status. For
example, MAAR means "Male, American, Alive, Real" (as opposed to "fictional"). Initgame can be
surprisingly addictive. See also {hing}.
Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor 135