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munching squares: n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1
(ca. 1962, reportedly discovered by Jackson Wright), which employs a
trivial computation (repeatedly plotting the graph Y = X XOR T for
successive values of T — see HAKMEM items
146--148) to produce an impressive display of moving and growing squares
that devour the screen. The initial value of T is treated as a parameter,
which, when well-chosen, can produce amazing effects. Some of these, later
(re)discovered on the LISP machine, have been christened munching triangles (try AND for XOR and
toggling points instead of plotting them), munching w's, and munching mazes. More generally, suppose a
graphics program produces an impressive and ever-changing display of some
basic form, foo, on a display terminal, and does it using a relatively
simple program; then the program (or the resulting display) is likely to be
referred to as munching foos. [This
is a good example of the use of the word foo as a
metasyntactic variable.]
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