:angle brackets: /n./ Either of the characters `<' (ASCII
0111100) and `>' (ASCII 0111110) (ASCII less-than or
greater-than signs). Typographers in the {Real World} use angle
brackets which are either taller and slimmer (the ISO `Bra' and
`Ket' characters), or significantly smaller (single or double
guillemets) than the less-than and greater-than signs.
See {broket}, {{ASCII}}.
:angry fruit salad: /n./ A bad visual-interface design that
uses too many colors. (This term derives, of course, from the
bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad.) Too often one
sees similar effects from interface designers using color window
systems such as {X}; there is a tendency to create displays that
are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable for long-term
use.
:annoybot: /*-noy-bot/ /n./ [IRC] See {robot}.
:ANSI: /an'see/ 1. /n./ [techspeak] The American National
Standards Institute. ANSI, along with the International
Organization
for Standards (ISO), standardized the C programming language (see
{K&R}, {Classic C}), and promulgates many other important
software standards. 2. /n./ [techspeak] A terminal may be said to
be
`ANSI' if it meets the ANSI X.364 standard for terminal control.
Unfortunately, this standard was both over-complicated and too
permissive. It has been retired and replaced by the ECMA-48
standard, which shares both flaws. 3. /n./ [BBS jargon] The set of
screen-painting codes that most MS-DOS and Amiga computers accept.
This comes from the ANSI.SYS device driver that must be loaded on
an MS-DOS computer to view such codes. Unfortunately, neither DOS
ANSI nor the BBS ANSIs derived from it exactly match the ANSI X.364
terminal standard. For example, the ESC-[1m code turns on the bold
highlight on large machines, but in IBM PC/MS-DOS ANSI, it turns on
`intense' (bright) colors. Also, in BBS-land, the term `ANSI' is
often used to imply that a particular computer uses or can emulate
the IBM high-half character set from MS-DOS. Particular use
depends on context. Occasionally, the vanilla ASCII character set
is used with the color codes, but on BBSs, ANSI and `IBM
characters' tend to go together.
:AOS: 1. /aws/ (East Coast), /ay'os/ (West Coast) /vt. obs./
To increase the amount of something. "AOS the campfire."
[based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] Usage:
considered silly, and now obsolete. Now largely supplanted by
{bump}. See {SOS}. 2. /n./ A {{Multics}}-derived OS
supported at one time by Data General. This was pronounced
/A-O-S/ or /A-os/. A spoof of the standard AOS system
administrator's manual ("How to Load and Generate your AOS
System") was created, issued a part number, and circulated as
photocopy folklore; it was called "How to Goad and Levitate
your CHAOS System". 3. /n./ Algebraic Operating System, in
reference
to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix (reverse
Polish) notation. 4. A {BSD}-like operating system for the IBM
RT.
Historical note: AOS in sense 1 was the name of a {PDP-10} instruction that took any memory location in the computer and added 1 to it; AOS meant `Add One and do not Skip'. Why, you may ask, does the `S' stand for `do not Skip' rather than for `Skip'? Ah, here was a beloved piece of PDP-10 folklore. There were eight such instructions: AOSE added 1 and then skipped the next instruction if the result was Equal to zero; AOSG added 1 and then skipped if the result was Greater than 0; AOSN added 1 and then skipped if the result was Not 0; AOSA added 1 and then skipped Always; and so on. Just plain AOS didn't say when to skip, so it never skipped.
For similar reasons, AOJ meant `Add One and do not Jump'. Even more bizarre, SKIP meant `do not SKIP'! If you wanted to skip the next instruction, you had to say `SKIPA'. Likewise, JUMP meant `do not JUMP'; the unconditional form was JUMPA. However, hackers never did this. By some quirk of the 10's design, the {JRST} (Jump and ReSTore flag with no flag specified) was actually faster and so was invariably used. Such were the perverse mysteries of assembler programming.
:app: /ap/ /n./ Short for `application program', as opposed to a systems program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an app is often a self-contained environment for performing some well-defined task such as `word processing'; hackers tend to prefer more general-purpose tools.) See {killer app}; oppose {tool}, {operating system}.
:arena: [Unix] /n./ The area of memory attached to a process by `brk(2)' and `sbrk(2)' and used by `malloc(3)' as dynamic storage. So named from a `malloc: corrupt arena' message emitted when some early versions detected an impossible value in the free block list. See {overrun screw}, {aliasing bug}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {smash the stack}.
:arg: /arg/ /n./ Abbreviation for `argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like `piano' from `pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {param}, {parm}, {var}.