:quarter: n. Two bits. This in turn comes from the `pieces of eight' famed in pirate movies —- Spanish silver crowns that could be broken into eight pie-slice-shaped `bits' to make change. Early in American history the Spanish coin was considered equal to a dollar, so each of these `bits' was considered worth 12.5 cents. Syn. {tayste}, {crumb}, {quad}. Usage: rare. See also {nickle}, {nybble}, {{byte}}, {dynner}.
:ques: /kwes/ 1. n. The question mark character (`?', ASCII 0111111). 2. interj. What? Also frequently verb-doubled as "Ques ques?" See {wall}.
:quick-and-dirty: adj. 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}.
:quine: [from the name of the logician Willard V. Quine, via Douglas Hofstadter] n. A program which generates a copy of its source text as its complete output. Devising the shortest possible quine in some given programming language is a common hackish amusement. 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:
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 line break after the second semicolon. Some infamous {Obfuscated C Contest} entries have been quines that reproduced in exotic ways.
:quote chapter and verse: [by analogy with the mainstream phrase] v. 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."
:quotient: n. See {coefficient of X}.