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at low (e.g. 300 dpi) resolution (it was formerly believed that hand-tuned bitmap fonts were required for this task). Hackers consider PostScript to be among the most elegant hacks of all time, and the combination of technical merits and widespread availability has made PostScript the language of choice for graphical output. |
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pound on vt. Syn. bang on. |
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power cycle vt. (also, cycle power or just cycle) To power off a machine and then power it on immediately, with the intention of clearing some kind of hung or gronked state. Syn. 120 reset; see also Big Red Switch. Compare Vulcan nerve pinch, bounce (sense 4), and boot, and see the "AI Koans" (in Appendix A) about Tom Knight and the novice. |
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power hit n. A spike or drop-out in the electricity supplying your machine; a power glitch. These can cause crashes and even permanent damage to your machine(s). |
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PPN /P-P-N/, /pip'n/ n. obs. [from 'Project-Programmer Number'] A user-ID under TOPS-10 and its various mutant progeny at SAIL, BBN, CompuServe, and elsewhere. Old-time hackers from the PDP-10 era sometimes use this to refer to user IDs on other systems as well. |
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precedence lossage /pre's -dens los'j/ n. [C programmers] Coding error in an expression due to unexpected grouping of arithmetic or logical operators by the compiler. Used esp. of certain common coding errors in C due to the nonintuitively low precedence levels of &, ¦, , «, and » (for this reason, experienced C programmers deliberately forget the language's baroque precedence hierarchy and parenthesize defensively). Can always be avoided by suitable use of parentheses. LISP fans enjoy pointing out that this can't happen in their favorite language, which eschews precedence entirely, requiring one to use explicit parentheses everywhere. See aliasing bug, memory leak, memory smash, smash the stack, fandango on core, overrun screw. |
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prepend /pree'pend'/ vt. [by analogy with 'append'] To prefix. As with 'append' (but not 'prefix' or 'suffix' as a verb), the direct object is always the thing being added and not the original word (or character string, or whatever). "If you prepend a semicolon to the line, the translation routine will pass it through unaltered." |
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