Line noise
<communications> 1. Spurious characters due to electrical
noise in a communications link, especially an
EIA-232 serial connection.
Line noise may be induced by poor connections, interference or
crosstalk from other circuits, electrical storms,
cosmic rays, or (notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires.
2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the results of electrical line noise.
3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but employs
syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise.
Yes, there are languages this ugly.
The canonical example is
TECO, whose input syntax is often said to be indistinguishable from line noise.
Other non-
WYSIWYG editors, such as
Multics "qed" and
Unix "
ed", in the hands of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately obfuscated languages such as
INTERCAL.
[
Jargon File]
