= Z =
=====

zap: 1. n. Spiciness.  2. vt. To make food spicy.  3. vt. To make
   someone `suffer' by making his food spicy.  (Most hackers love
   spicy food.  Hot-and-sour soup is considered wimpy unless it makes
   you wipe your nose for the rest of the meal.)  See {zapped}.
   4. vt. To modify, usually to correct; esp. used when the action
   is performed with a debugger or binary patching tool.  Also implies
   surgical precision.  "Zap the debug level to 6 and run it again."
   In the IBM mainframe world, binary patches are applied to programs
   or to the OS with a program called `superzap', whose file name is
   `IMASPZAP' (I M A SuPerZAP).  5. vt. To erase or reset.  6. To
   {fry} a chip with static electricity. "Uh oh --- I think that
   lightning strike may have zapped the disk controller."

zapped: adj. Spicy.  This term is used to distinguish between food
   that is hot (in temperature) and food that is *spicy*-hot.
   For example, the Chinese appetizer Bon Bon Chicken is a kind of
   chicken salad that is cold but zapped; by contrast, {vanilla}
   wonton soup is hot but not zapped.  See also {{oriental food}},
   {laser chicken}.  See {zap}, senses 1 and 2.

zen: vt. To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash
   of enlightenment.  Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally
   applied to problems of life in general.  "How'd you figure out the
   buffer allocation problem?"  "Oh, I zenned it."  Contrast {grok},
   which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system.
   Compare {hack mode}.  See also {guru}.

zero: vt. 1. To set to 0.  Usually said of small pieces of data,
   such as bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero out').  2. To
   erase; to discard all data from.  Said of disks and directories,
   where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout
   the area being zeroed.  One may speak of something being
   `logically zeroed' rather than being `physically zeroed'.  See
   {scribble}.

zero-content: adj. Syn. {content-free}.

zeroth: /zee'rohth/ adj. First.  Among software designers, comes
   from C's and LISP's 0-based indexing of arrays.  Hardware people
   also tend to start counting at 0 instead of 1; this is natural
   since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits correspond to the binary
   numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital devices known as `counters'
   count in this way.

   Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first
   chapter of a publication `chapter 0', especially if it is of an
   introductory nature (one of the classic instances was in the First
   Edition of {K&R}).  In recent years this trait has also been
   observed among many pure mathematicians (who have an independent
   tradition of numbering from 0).  Zero-based numbering tends to
   reduce {fencepost error}s, though it cannot eliminate them
   entirely.

zigamorph: /zig'*-morf/ n. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a
   delimiter or {fence} character.  Usage: primarily at IBM
   shops.

zip: [primarily MS-DOS] vt. To create a compressed archive from a
   group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver.  Its
   use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm
   have been written.  Commonly used as follows: "I'll zip it up and
   send it to you."  See {arc}, {tar and feather}.

zipperhead: [IBM] n. A person with a closed mind.

zombie: [UNIX] n. A process that has died but has not yet
   relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process
   hasn't executed a `wait(2)' for it yet).  These can be seen in
   `ps(1)' listings occasionally.  Compare {orphan}.

zorch: /zorch/ 1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink.
   2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with v approaching c [that
   is, with velocity approaching lightspeed --- ESR].  3. [MIT] v. To
   propel something very quickly.  "The new comm software is very
   fast; it really zorches files through the network."  4. [MIT] n.
   Influence.  Brownie points.  Good karma.  The intangible and fuzzy
   currency in which favors are measured.  "I'd rather not ask him
   for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him
   for the week."  5. [MIT] n. Energy, drive, or ability.  "I think
   I'll {punt} that change for now; I've been up for 30 hours
   and I've run out of zorch."

Zork: /zork/ n. The second of the great early experiments in computer
   fantasy gaming; see {ADVENT}.  Originally written on MIT-DM
   during the late 1970s, later distributed with BSD UNIX and
   commercialized as `The Zork Trilogy' by Infocom.

zorkmid: /zork'mid/ n. The canonical unit of currency in
   hacker-written games.  This originated in {zork} but has spread
   to {nethack} and is referred to in several other games.