The New Hacker's Dictionarybackreference // n. 1. In a regular expression or pattern match, the text which was matched within grouping parentheses parentheses. 2. The part of the pattern which refers back to the matched text. 3. By extension, anything which refers back to something which has been seen or discussed before. "When you said 'she' just now, who were you backreferencing?" backronym // n. [portmanteau of back + acronym] A word interpreted as an acronym that was not originally so intended. This is a special case of what linguists call 'back formation'. Examples are given under BASIC, recursive acronym (Cygnus), Acme, and mung. Discovering backronyms is a common form of wordplay among hackers. Compare retcon. backspace and overstrike // interj. [rare] Whoa! Back up. Used to suggest that someone just said or did something wrong. Once common among APL programmers; may now be obsolete. backward combatability /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ n. [CMU, Tektronix: from 'backward compatibility'] A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of 'new and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively defeated. (Too often, the old and new versions cannot definitively be distinguished, such that lingering instances of the previous ones yield crashes or other infelicitous effects, as opposed to a simple "version mismatch" message.) A backwards compatible change, on the other hand, allows old versions to coexist without crashes or error messages, but too many major changes incorporating elaborate backwards compatibility processing can lead to extreme software bloat. See also flag day. BAD /B-A-D/ adj. [IBM: acronym, 'Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is bogus because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See working as designed. |