legal adj. Loosely used to mean in accordance with all the relevant rules , esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by software. The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax in ANSI C. This parser processes each line of legal input the moment it sees the trailing linefeed. Hackers often model their work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective is to maneuver through the thicket of natural laws to achieve a desired objective. Their use of legal is flavored as much by this game-playing sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers. Compare language lawyer , legalese.