Whack

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The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

whack

Usage: v. See Also: whacker

whack: v.

According to arch-hacker James Gosling (designer of NeWS, GOSMACS and Java), to "...modify a program with no idea whatsoever how it works." (See whacker.) It is actually possible to do this in nontrivial circumstances if the change is small and well-defined and you are very good at glarking things from context. As a trivial example, it is relatively easy to change all stderr writes to stdout writes in a piece of C filter code which remains otherwise mysterious.

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