JargonFile/entries/by hand.txt

by hand

adv. 1. [common] Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial,
and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the
computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through. My
mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message I'm
replying to, so I have to do it by hand. This does not necessarily mean the
speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it might refer to, say,
dropping into a subshell from the mailer, making a copy of one's mailbox
file, reading that into an editor, locating the top and bottom of the
message in question, deleting the rest of the file, inserting ` ' characters
on each line, writing the file, leaving the editor, returning to the mailer,
reading the file in, and later remembering to delete the file. Compare
eyeball search. 2. [common] By extension, writing code which does something
in an explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine
ought to have been available. This cretinous B-tree library doesn't supply a
decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand.