from the long lost files

[joshua0]

malloc() (n., from the Latin mal-, which means bad, and the Latin locus, which means place) 1. a function to return a bad place to store data; a routine characterized by slowing down a program and wasting space. "Half my goddamn students used ~ for the heads of their linked lists. Didn't bubblingbeebles tell them about the & operator in 213?"

Comments

[nunfetishist.livejournal.com]

You should, of course, store everything on the stack.

[zetorux.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, nice

I'm not sure I get the example quotation though. In what context would bitwise NOT/AND be relevant to linked lists and/or malloc?

[chrisamaphone]

i can't tell if you're being facetious. in case you're not: unary (addressof) &, not binary (bitwise) &.

[zetorux.livejournal.com]

Well yes, that would make sense, but I just assumed it was bitwise because there was another bitwise operator directly preceding it -- or so I thought anyway. Looking at it now, I suppose the tilde is intended to denote a substitution for the defined word rather than an operator. However, at the time, that notation was not obvious to me, which understandably caused some confusion.

[chrisamaphone]

heh, i love the retroetymology.