17 lines
922 B
Plaintext
17 lines
922 B
Plaintext
line eater, the
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n. obs. 1. [Usenet] A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews
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software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The bug
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was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab.
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This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called the line
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eater , and postings often included a dummy line of line eater food.
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Ironically, line eater food not beginning with a space or tab wasn't
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actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there was a space or tab
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before it, then the line eater would eat the food and the beginning of the
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text it was supposed to be protecting. The practice of sacrificing to the
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line eater continued for some time after the bug had been nailed to the wall
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, and is still humorously referred to. The bug itself was still occasionally
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reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways as late as 1991. 2.
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See NSA line eater.
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