signature

1. A set of function symbols with arities.

2. messaging (Or sig) A few lines of information about the

sender of an electronic mail message or news posting.

Most Unix mail and news software will automagically append

a signature from a file called .signature in the user's homedirectory to outgoing mail and news.

A signature should give your real name and your e-mailaddress since, though these appear in the headers of your

messages, they may be munged by intervening software. It is

currently (1994) hip to include the URL of your home page

on the World-Wide Web in your sig.

The composition of one's sig can be quite an art form,

including an ASCII logo or one's choice of witty sayings

(see sig quote, fool file). However, large sigs are a

waste of bandwidth, and it has been observed that the size

of one's sig block is usually inversely proportional to one's

prestige on the net.

See also doubled sig, sig virus.

2. programming A concept very similar to abstract baseclasses except that they have their own hierarchy and can

be applied to compiled classes. Signatures provide a means

of separating subtyping and inheritance. They are

implemented in C++ as patches to GCC 2.5.2 by Gerald

Baumgartner [email protected].

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(2001-01-05)