munching squares

n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1 (ca. 1962, reportedly discovered
by Jackson Wright), which employs a trivial computation (repeatedly plotting
the graph Y = X XOR T for successive values of T see HAKMEM items 146--148)
to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares that devour
the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter, which, when
well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later
(re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened munching triangles
(try AND for XOR and toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's
, and munching mazes. More generally, suppose a graphics program produces an
impressive and ever-changing display of some basic form, foo, on a display
terminal, and does it using a relatively simple program; then the program
(or the resulting display) is likely to be referred to as munching foos.
[This is a good example of the use of the word foo as a metasyntactic
variable.

