WhatIs

/P-O-D/

Acronym for 'Piece Of Data' (as opposed to a code section). Usage: pedantic and rare.

See also pod.

/ō-vər-rən skrü/

[C programming]

/ō-vər-rən/

n. 1. [techspeak] Term for a frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, esp. in serial line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if your silo can hold only two characters and the machine takes longer than 2 msec to get to service the interrupt, at least one character will be lost.

2. Also applied to non-serial-I/O communications.

"I forgot to pay my electric bill due to mail overrun."

/ˈoʊvərˌfloʊ-skruː/

History of Overflow-Screw: Addressing Data Overload

The term "overflow-screw" is a computer term that pertains to the management of data overflow in computing systems. As the demand for data processing and storage grew, early computing systems faced challenges in handling excessive amounts of data. The concept of an overflow-screw emerged as a solution to prevent data overflow and preserve the integrity of stored information.

/ō-vər-flō bit/

n. 1. [techspeak] On some processors, an attempt to calculate a result too large for a register to hold causes a particular flag called an overflow bit to be set.

2. Hackers use the term of human thought too.

"Well, the Ada description was baroque all right, but I could hack it OK until they got to the exception handling... that set my overflow bit."

/au̇t-əv-band/

[from telecommunications and network theory]

adj. 1. In software, describes values of a function which are not in its 'natural' range of return values, but are rather signals that some kind of exception has occurred. Many C functions, for example, return either a nonnegative integral value, or indicate failure with an out-of-band return value of -1.

Compare hidden flag, green bytes.

/O-S tü/

n. The anointed successor to MS-DOS for Intel 286- and 386-based micros; proof that IBM/Microsoft couldn't get it right the second time, either. Mentioning it is usually good for a cheap laugh among hackers -- the design was so baroque, and the implementation of 1.x so bad, that 3 years after introduction you could still count the major apps shipping for it on the fingers of two hands -- in unary. Often called 'Half-an-OS'.

/O-S/

1. [Operating System] n. An acronym heavily used in email, occasionally in speech.
2. n.,obs. On ITS, an output spy.

/ȯr-thä-gə-nᵊl/

[from mathematics]

/ȯr-fən'd ī nōd/

[UNIX]

n. 1. [techspeak] A file that retains storage but no longer appears in the directories of a filesystem.

2. By extension, a pejorative for any person serving no useful function within some organization, esp. lion food without subordinates.