WhatIs

/cher-noh'b*l pak'*t/

n. A network packet that induces network meltdown (the result of a broadcast storm), in memory of the 1987 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The typical case of this is an IP Ethernet datagram that passes through a gateway with both source and destination Ether and IP address set as the respective broadcast addresses for the subnetworks being gated between.

Compare Christmas tree packet.

/chər-ˈnō-bəl chi-kᵊn/

n. See laser chicken.

/ke-mist/

[Cambridge]

n. Someone who wastes computer time on number-crunching when you'd far rather the machine were doing something more productive, such as working out anagrams of your name or printing Snoopy calendars or running life patterns. May or may not refer to someone who actually studies chemistry.

/chās pȯin-tərs/

1. vi. To go through multiple levels of indirection, as in traversing a linked list or graph structure. Used esp. by programmers in C, where explicit pointers are a very common data type. This is techspeak, but it remains jargon when used of human networks.

"I'm chasing pointers. Bob said you could tell me who to talk to about..."

See dangling pointer and snap.

/char'it-ee-weir'/

n. Syn. careware.

/keir/ or /char/; rarely, /kar/

n. Shorthand for 'character'. Esp. used by C programmers, as 'char' is C's typename for character data.

/chān/

[orig. from BASIC's 'CHAIN' statement]

vi. To hand off execution to a child or successor without going through the OS command interpreter that invoked it. The state of the parent program is lost and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most UNIX programmers will think of this as an exec.

/chad bäks/

n. Iron Age card punches contained boxes inside them, about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large wastebasket), that held the chad (sense 2). You had to open the covers of the card punch periodically and empty the chad box. The bit bucket was notionally the equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was typically across the room in another great gray-and-blue box.

/chad/

n. 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called selvage and perf.

2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this was also called 'chaff', 'computer confetti', and 'keypunch droppings'.

/ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/

[ from LISP ]

vt. To skip past the first item from a list of things (generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures, which returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its argument). In the form cdr down, to trace down a list of elements:

"Shall we cdr down the agenda?"

Usage: silly. See also loop through.