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3.3 KiB
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24 lines
3.3 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>crunch</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../C.html" title="C"/><link rel="previous" href="crumb.html" title="crumb"/><link rel="next" href="cryppie.html" title="cryppie"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">crunch</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="crumb.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">C</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="cryppie.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="crunch"/><dt xmlns="" id="crunch"><b>crunch</b></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. <span class="grammar">vi.</span> To process, usually in a
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time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial
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operation that is nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to
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the triviality's being embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000.
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“<span class="quote">FORTRAN programs do mostly
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<a href="../N/number-crunching.html"><i class="glossterm">number-crunching</i></a>.</span>” </p></dd><dd><p> 2. <span class="grammar">vt.</span> To reduce the size of a
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file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely
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unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends
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up looking something like a paper document would if somebody crunched the
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paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations
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than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term is doubly
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appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction <span class="firstterm">file crunch(ing)</span> to distinguish it from
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<a href="../N/number-crunching.html"><i class="glossterm">number-crunching</i></a>.) See
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<a href="compress.html"><i class="glossterm">compress</i></a>. </p></dd><dd><p> 3. <span class="grammar">n.</span> The character
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<tt class="literal">#</tt>. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places. See
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<a href="../A/ASCII.html"><i class="glossterm">ASCII</i></a>. </p></dd><dd><p> 4. <span class="grammar">vt.</span> To squeeze program source
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into a minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute. The
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term came into being specifically for a famous program on the BBC micro
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that crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a
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wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of characters mattered).
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<a href="../O/Obfuscated-C-Contest.html"><i class="glossterm">Obfuscated C Contest</i></a> entries are often crunched; see
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the first example under that entry.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="crumb.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../C.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="cryppie.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">crumb </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> cryppie</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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