The New Hacker's Dictionary

channel hopping // n.

[common; IRC, GEnie] To rapidly switch channels on IRC, or a GEnie chat board, just as a social butterfly might hop from one group to another at a party. This term may derive from the TV watcher's idiom, 'channel surfing'.

channel op /chan'l op/ n.

[IRC] Someone who is endowed with privileges on a particular IRC channel; commonly abbreviated 'chanop' or 'CHOP' or just 'op' (as of 2000 these short forms have almost crowded out the parent usage). These privileges include the right to kick users, to change various status bits, and to make others into CHOPs.

chanop /chan'-op/ n.

[IRC] See channel op.

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

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

charityware /cha'rit-ee-weir'/ n.

syn. careware.

chase pointers //

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.

2. [Cambridge] 'pointer chase' or 'pointer hunt': The process of going through a core dump (sense 1), interactively or on a large piece of paper printed with hex runes, following dynamic data-structures. Used only in a debugging context.

chawmp // n.

[University of Florida] 16 or 18 bits (half of a machine word). This term was used by FORTH hackers during the late 1970s/early 1980s; it is said to have been archaic then, and may now be obsolete. It was coined in revolt against the promiscuous use of 'word' for anything between 16 and 32 bits; 'word' has an additional special meaning for FORTH hacks that made the overloading intolerable. For similar reasons, /gaw'bl/ (spelled 'gawble' or possibly 'gawbul') was in use as a term for 32 or 48 bits (presumably a full machine word, but our sources are unclear on this). These terms are more easily understood if one thinks of them as faithful phonetic spellings of 'chomp' and 'gobble' pronounced in a Florida or other Southern U.S. dialect. For general discussion of similar terms, see nybble.