WhatIs

/P-M/

1. v. (from preventive maintenance) To bring down a machine for inspection or test purposes; see scratch monkey.

2. n. Abbrev. for Presentation Manager, an elephantine OS/2 graphical user interface.

See also provocative maintenance.

/plə-miŋ/

[UNIX]

n. Term used for shell code, so called because of the prevalence of 'pipelines' that feed the output of one program to the input of another. Under UNIX, user utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time, and the capability is considered one of UNIX's major winning features. Esp. used in the construction 'hairy plumbing' (see hairy).

/pləgh/

[from the ADVENT game] v.

See xyzzy.

/pläŋk/

[USENET: possibly influenced by British slang 'plonk' for cheap booze]

The sound a newbie makes as he falls to the bottom of a kill file. Used almost exclusively in the newsgroup talk.bizarre, this term (usually written *plonk*) is a form of public ridicule.

/plȯk-tā/ or /P-L-O-K-T-A/

[Acronym for Press Lots Of Keys To Abort]

v. To press random keys in an attempt to get some response from the system. One might PLOKTA when the abort procedure for a program is not known, or when trying to figure out if the system is just sluggish or really hung. PLOKTA can also be used while trying to figure out any unknown key sequence for a particular operation. Someone going into PLOKTA mode usually places both hands flat on the keyboard and presses down, hoping for some useful response.

/pliŋ-net/

n. Syn. UUCPNET. Also see Commonwealth Hackish, which uses 'pling' for bang (as in bang path).

/plāt/

16 bits, by analogy with nybble and byte. Usage: rare and extremely silly.

See also dynner and crumb.

/plā-pen/

[IBM]

n. A room where programmers work.

Compare salt mines.

/plat-nəm-i-ri-dē-əm/

adj. Standard, against which all others of the same category are measured. Usage: silly. The notion is that one of whatever it is has actually been cast in platinum-iridium alloy and placed in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris.

/plan fī(-ə)l/

[UNIX]

n. On systems that support finger, the '.plan' file in a user's home directory is displayed when the user is fingered. This feature was originally intended to be used to keep potential fingerers apprised of one's location and near-future plans, but has been turned almost universally to humorous and self-expressive purposes (like a sig block).

See Hacking X for Y.