WhatIs

/in-tər-ˈkal/

[said by the authors to stand for Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym]

n. A computer language designed by Don Woods and James Lyon in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make the style of the language clear:

/in-ˈsān-lē grāt/

adj. [Mac community, from Steve Jobs; also BSD UNIX people via Bill Joy] Something so incredibly elegant that it is imaginable only to someone possessing the most puissant of hacker-natures.

/in-ˈfi-nə-tē/

n. 

1. The largest value that can be represented in a particular type of variable (register, memory location, data type, whatever).

2. minus infinity: The smallest such value, not necessarily or even usually the simple negation of plus infinity. In N-bit twos-complement arithmetic, infinity is 2N^-1 - 1 but minus infinity is - (2N^-1), not -(2N^-1 - 1).

   Note also that this is different from "time T equals minus infinity", which is closer to a mathematician's usage of infinity.

/in-fə-nət lüp/

n. One that never terminates (that is, the machine spins or buzzes forever; the usual symptom is catatonic). There is a standard joke that has been made about each generation's exemplar of the ultra-fast machine:

"The Cray-3 is so fast it can execute an infinite loop in under 2 seconds!"

/in-fə-nət/

adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very loosely as in:

"This program produces infinite garbage."

"He is an infinite loser."

The word most likely to follow 'infinite', though, is hair (it has been pointed out that fractals are an excellent example of infinite hair). These uses are abuses of the word's mathematical meaning. The term 'semi-infinite', denoting an immoderately large amount of some resource, is also heard.

/in-fənt mȯr-ˈta-lə-tē/

n. It is common lore among hackers that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since power-up (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as 'infant mortality' problems (or, occasionally, as 'sudden infant death syndrome').

/in-ˌdeks/

n. See coefficient.

/in-ˈdent stī(-ə)l/

[C programmers]

/in-ˈklüd wȯr/

n. Excessive multi-leveled including within a discussion thread, a practice that tends to annoy readers. In a forum with high-traffic newsgroups, such as USENET, this can lead to flames and the urge to start a kill file.

/in-ˈklüd/

vt. [USENET]

1. To duplicate a portion (or whole) of another's message (typically with attribution to the source) in a reply or followup, for clarifying the context of one's response.

See the the discussion of inclusion styles under "Hacker Writing Style".

2. [from C] '#include <disclaimer.h>' has appeared in sig blocks to refer to a notional 'standard disclaimer file'.