16 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
16 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>happily</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="../H.html" title="H"/><link rel="previous" href="Hanlons-Razor.html" title="Hanlon's Razor"/><link rel="next" href="hard-boot.html" title="hard boot"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">happily</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Hanlons-Razor.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">H</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="hard-boot.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="happily"/><dt xmlns="" id="happily"><b>happily</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">adv.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> Of software, used to emphasize that a program is unaware of some
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important fact about its environment, either because it has been fooled
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into believing a lie, or because it doesn't care. The sense of
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‘happy’ here is not that of elation, but rather that of
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blissful ignorance. “<span class="quote">The program continues to run, happily unaware
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that its output is going to /dev/null.</span>” Also used to suggest that a
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program or device would really rather be doing something destructive, and
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is being given an opportunity to do so. “<span class="quote">If you enter an O here
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instead of a zero, the program will happily erase all your data.</span>”
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Nevertheless, use of this term implies a basically benign attitude towards
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the program: It didn't mean any harm, it was just eager to do its job. We'd
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like to be angry at it but we shouldn't, we should try to understand it
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instead. The adjective “<span class="quote">cheerfully</span>” is often used in exactly
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the same way.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Hanlons-Razor.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../H.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="hard-boot.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Hanlon's Razor </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> hard boot</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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