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DWIM / dwim/ [ acronym, " Do What I Mean" ( not what I say)] 1. Able to
guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when
bogus input was provided.
2. The BBNLISP/ INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish
this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. See
{ hairy}.
3. Occasionally, an interjection hurled at a balky computer,
especially when one senses one might be tripping over
legalisms ( see { legalese}).
Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and
spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his
style, and would often make hash of anyone else' s typos if
they were stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus
claimed that the acronym stood for " Damn Warren' s Infernal
Machine!'.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
command interpreter used at { Xerox PARC}. One day another
hacker there typed " delete *$" to free up some disk space.
( The editor there named backup files by appending "$" to the
original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup
files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that
there weren' t any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully
reported "*$ not found, assuming you meant ' delete *'". It
then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker
managed to stop it with a { Vulcan nerve pinch} after only a
half dozen or so files were lost.
The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted
to go to Warren' s office, tie Warren down in his chair in
front of his workstation, and then type " delete *$" twice.
DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a
complex program; it is also occasionally described as the
single instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when
proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also
jokes about " DWIMC" ( Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related
term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT ( Do The Right Thing);
see { Right Thing}.
[{ Jargon File}] |
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