From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,74b55538385b7366 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dennison@telepath.com Subject: Entamology of "Nasal Demons" Date: 1999/06/09 Message-ID: <7jm4ga$o2e$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 487529388 References: <928083159.436.79@news.remarQ.com> <928174549.336.98@news.remarQ.com> <7iuqkc$ln6$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <928529202.956.79@news.remarQ.com> <928569312.951.42@news.remarQ.com> <7jb1l9$694$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <928703068.617.98@news.remarQ.com> <1999Jun6.181633.1@eisner> <7jm185$mhf$1@nnrp1.deja.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x41.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 204.48.27.130 Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Jun 09 16:24:57 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.6 [en] (WinNT; I) Date: 1999-06-09T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <7jm185$mhf$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, dennison@telepath.com wrote: > In article , > Keith Thompson wrote: > > > The folks over in comp.std.c have a good term term for this: "nasal > > demons". This originated when someone observed that when the compiler > > encounters a construct with undefined behavior, it is legal for it to > > make demons fly out of your nose. See also the entry for "nasal > > demons" in The Jargon File and/or _The New Hacker's Dictionary_. > > That's interesting. I wonder if that came about indepedently from > c.l.a.'s "nasal monkeys", or if one influenced the other. I just went and looked it up myself. The earliest reference I could find to "making X fly out of Y's nose" was from a posting by Richard A. O'Keefe on 1995/08/04 in comp.lang.c.moderated. It may go back further than that, because dejanews doesn't keep messages much older than that. The first mention in comp.lang.ada was about 2 months later by Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) in a thread crossposted from several other language newsgroups, including comp.lang.c. This is the post I saw. It did indeed mention "demons", not "monkeys". I must have been watching Wizard of Oz at the time. :-) The term "nasal demons" seems to have first appeared in another thread crossposted to c.l.a and c.l.c about 3 months later by Todd Knarr Deja is quite handy for wasting time in this manner. :-) -- T.E.D. Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.