[Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of `ETLA' (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced/ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms. The term `SFLA' (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym) has also been reported. See also YABA.
The self-effacing phrase "TDM TLA" (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: "There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms." (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.
Of course, perl -e 'while(<>){print pack("H32",$_)}' can be replaced with perl -ne 'print pack("H32",$_)'. The -n flag acts a while loop around the script.
This is true. csh is unable to manipulate any file descriptor, errs on a simple time | echo statement, says kill -1 `cat foo` is ambiguous, can only trap SIGINT, and has strange bugs. However, tcsh fixes some of these bugs. See Tom Christiansen's Csh Programming Considered Harmful article for more information.
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Another good one is Translator.cx, a GPL'd translator.
If you're using BSD, see the Deploying Portsentry article on BSD Today.
Of course, perl -e 'while(<>){print pack("H32",$_)}' can be replaced with perl -ne 'print pack("H32",$_)'. The -n flag acts a while loop around the script.
mtool's mdir command can emulate MS-DOS's dir command.
This is true. csh is unable to manipulate any file descriptor, errs on a simple time | echo statement, says kill -1 `cat foo` is ambiguous, can only trap SIGINT, and has strange bugs. However, tcsh fixes some of these bugs. See Tom Christiansen's Csh Programming Considered Harmful article for more information.