The Jargon File

Originally created by Raphael Finkel, The Jargon File is a list of slang terms used by computer programmers. In recent years the file has fallen into disrepair and much of the language has become dated or irrelevant as fashions, technologies and memes have changed.

I encourage readers to reclaim The Jargon File and make changes, additions or deletions as they see fit. All vaguely sensible pull requests will be considered.

For readability within a Git repository all entries should be plain ASCII text with a maximum of 78 characters across.

This version of The Jargon File was based upon version 4.4.7 maintained by Eric S. Raymond. It was originally imported from HTML via the importJargon.py script within the import subdirectory.

Converting to other formats

As a Git repository the file isn't all that useful. You can export it in other formats as follows:

python makeJargon.py

All of the resulting documents can be found in the docs subdirectory. Current formats supported are manpages, HTML and org-mode markup.

To install the manpage:

sudo install -m 644 docs/jargon.1.gz /usr/local/share/man/man1