crunch
:crunch: 1. vi. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated
way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless
painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being
embedded in a loop from 1 to 1,000,000,000. "FORTRAN programs do mostly
number-crunching
" 2. vt. To reduce the size of a file by a
complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated
to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up
looking something like a paper document would if somebody crunched the
paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more
computations than simpler methods such as run-length encoding, the term
is doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction
`file crunch(ing)' to distinguish it from number-crunching
) See
compress
3. n. The character `#'. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other
places. See ASCII
. 4. vt. To squeeze program source into a
minimum-size representation that will still compile or execute. The term
came into being specifically for a famous program on the BBC micro that
crunched BASIC source in order to make it run more quickly (it was a
wholly interpretive BASIC, so the number of characters mattered).
Obfuscated C Contest
entries are often crunched; see the first example
under that entry.
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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