line eater

messaging 1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the

Usenet software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the

article text. The bug was triggered by having the text of the

article start with a space or tab. This bug was quickly

personified as a mythical creature called the "line eater",

and postings often included a dummy line of "line eater food".

Ironically, line eater "food" not beginning with a space or

tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if

there *was* a space or tab before it, then the line eater

would eat the food *and* the beginning of the text it was

supposed to be protecting. The practice of "sacrificing to

the line eater" continued for some time after the bug had been

nailed to the wall, and is still humorously referred to.

The bug itself is still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported to

be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways.

2. NSA line eater.

(1996-04-09)