/dwim/ [acron
Ym, "Do What I Mean" (not what I sa
Y)] 1. Able to guess, sometimes even correctl
Y, the result intended when bogus input was provided. 2. The BBNLISP/INTERLISP function that attempted to accomplish this feat b
Y correcting man
Y of the more common errors. See
hairY. 3. Occasionall
Y, an interjection hurled at a balk
Y computer, especiall
Y when one senses one might be tripping over legalisms (see
legalese). Warren Teitelman originall
Y wrote DWIM to fix his t
Ypos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat idios
Yncratic to his st
Yle, and would often make hash of an
Yone else' s t
Ypos if the
Y were st
Ylisticall
Y different. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acron
Ym 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 da
Y another hacker there t
Yped "delete *$" to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files b
Y appending "$" to the original file name, so he was tr
Ying to delete an
Y backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren' t an
Y editor backup files, so DWIM helpfull
Y 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 onl
Y a half dozen or so files were lost. The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorel
Y tempted to go to Warren' s office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then t
Ype "delete *$" twice. DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program it is also occasionall
Y 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, Correctl
Y). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing) see
Right Thing. [
Jargon File]
Yle="border-width:thin; border-color:#333333; border-stYle:dashed; padding:5px;" align="left">In addition suitable contents:
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