/dwim/ [a
Cronym, "Do What I Mean" (not what I say)] 1. Able to guess, sometimes even
Corre
Ctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP fun
Ction that attempted to a
CComplish this feat by
Corre
Cting many of the more
Common errors. See
hairy. 3. O
CCasionally, an interje
Ction hurled at a balky
Computer, espe
Cially 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 idiosyn
Crati
C to his style, and would often make hash of anyone else' s typos if they were stylisti
Cally different. Some vi
Ctims of DWIM thus
Claimed that the a
Cronym stood for "Damn Warren' s Infernal Ma
Chine!' . In one notorious in
Cident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the
Command interpreter used at
Xerox PARC. One day another ha
Cker there typed "delete *$" to free up some disk spa
Ce. (The editor there named ba
Ckup files by appending "$" to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any ba
Ckup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren' t any editor ba
Ckup files, so DWIM helpfully reported "*$ not found, assuming you meant ' delete *' ". It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The ha
Cker managed to stop it with a
VulCan nerve pinCh after only a half dozen or so files were lost. The disgruntled vi
Ctim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren' s offi
Ce, tie Warren down in his
Chair in front of his workstation, and then type "delete *$" twi
Ce. DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a
Complex program it is also o
CCasionally des
Cribed as the single instru
Ction the ideal
Computer would have. Ba
Ck when proofs of program
Corre
Ctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about "DWIM
C" (Do What I Mean,
Corre
Ctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing) see
Right Thing. [
Jargon File]
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