(Christian eschatological myth) The notional line of source at which a program fails for obscure reasons, implying either that *somebody* is out to get it (when you are the programmer), or that it richly deserves to be got (when you are not). E.g. "It works when I trace through it, but seems to crash on line 666 when I run it." "What happens is that whenever a large batch comes through, mmdf dies on the Line of the Beast. Probably some twit href="module.php?name=Lexikon&file=search&eid=1&query=hard-coded">hard-coded a buffer size." [href="module.php?name=Lexikon&file=search&eid=1&query=Jargon File">Jargon File] (1999-03-01)
