2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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DWIM
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/dwim/ [acronym, Do What I Mean ] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even
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correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. n. obs. The
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BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat by
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correcting many of the more common errors. See hairy. 3. Occasionally, an
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interjection hurled at a balky computer, esp. when one senses one might be
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tripping over legalisms (see legalese ). 4. Of a person, someone whose
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directions are incomprehensible and vague, but who nevertheless has the
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expectation that you will solve the problem using the specific method he/she
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has in mind. Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
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spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would
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often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different.
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Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood for Damn Warren s
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Infernal Machine!'. In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature
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to the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there
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typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup
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files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to delete
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any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that
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there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported *$ not
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found, assuming you meant 'delete *'. It then started to delete all the
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files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a Vulcan nerve pinch
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after only a half dozen or so files were lost. The disgruntled victim later
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said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in
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his chair in front of his workstation, and then type delete *$ twice. DWIM
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is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program; it is
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also occasionally described as the single instruction the ideal computer
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would have. Back when proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there
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were also jokes about DWIMC (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term,
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more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see Right Thing.
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