Related:

• him n. A small piece of data inserted in order to achieve a desired memory alignment or other addressing property.
  For example, the PDP-11 Unix linker, in split I&...
• vaxocentrism /vak`soh-sen'trizm/ n. [analogy with `ethnocentrism'] A notional disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are valid (esp.
  under Unix) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are...
• loose bytes: n. Commonwealth hackish term for the padding bytes or {shim}s many compilers insert between members of a record or structure to cope with alignment requirements imposed by the machine architecture.
  -- The AI Hackers Dictionary...
• dev/null: /dev-nuhl/ [from the UNIX null device, used as a data sink] n.
  A notional `black hole' in any information space being discussed, used, or referred to....
• fence: n. 1. A sequence of one or more distinguished ({out-of-band}) characters (or other data items)
  used to delimit a piece of data intended to be treated as a unit (the computer-science literature calls this a `sentinel')....
• magic number n. [Unix/C; common] 1. In source code
  some non-obvious constant whose value is significant to the operation of a program and that is inserted inconspicuously in-line (hardcoded), rather than expanded in by a symbol set by a commented #define....
• byte:: /bi:t/ [techspeak] n. A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one characte
  on modern architectures this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines....
• P.O.D.: /P-O-D/ Acronym for `Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code section).
  Usage: pedantic and rare. See also {pod}. -- The AI Hackers Dictionary...
• NUXI problem: /nuk'see pro'bl*m/ n. Refers to the problem of transferring data between machines with differing byte-order.
  The string `UNIX' might look like `NUXI' on a machine with a different `byte sex' (e....