line eater

line eater

(messaging)1. A bug in some now-obsolete versions of theUsenet software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of thearticle text. The bug was triggered by having the text of thearticle start with a space or tab. This bug was quicklypersonified 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 ortab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but ifthere *was* a space or tab before it, then the line eaterwould eat the food *and* the beginning of the text it wassupposed to be protecting. The practice of "sacrificing tothe line eater" continued for some time after the bug had beennailed to the wall, and is still humorously referred to.The bug itself is still (in mid-1991) occasionally reported tobe lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways.

2. NSA line eater.