18 lines
1014 B
Plaintext
18 lines
1014 B
Plaintext
magic cookie
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n. [Unix; common] 1. Something passed between routines or programs that
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enables the receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or
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opaque identifier. Especially used of small data objects that contain data
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encoded in a strange or intrinsically machine-dependent way. E.g., on
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non-Unix OSes with a non-byte-stream model of files, the result of ftell (3)
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may be a magic cookie rather than a byte offset; it can be passed to fseek
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(3) , but not operated on in any meaningful way. The phrase it hands you a
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magic cookie means it returns a result whose contents are not defined but
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which can be passed back to the same or some other program later. 2. An
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in-band code for changing graphic rendition (e.g., inverse video or
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underlining) or performing other control functions (see also cookie ). Some
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older terminals would leave a blank on the screen corresponding to
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mode-change magic cookies; this was also called a glitch (or occasionally a
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turd ; compare mouse droppings ). See also cookie.
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