peck

n 1: (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent:

"a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of

money"; "it must have cost plenty" [syn: {batch}, {deal},

{flock}, {good deal}, {great deal}, {hatful}, {heap}, {lot},

{mass}, {mess}, {mickle}, {mint}, {muckle}, {pile}, {plenty},

{pot}, {quite a little}, {raft}, {sight}, {slew}, {spate},

{stack}, {tidy sum}, {wad}, {whole lot}, {whole slew}]

2: a British imperial capacity measure (liquid or dry) equal to

2 gallons

3: a United States dry measure equal to 8 quarts or 537.605

cubic inches

v 1: hit lightly with a picking motion [syn: {pick}, {beak}]

2: eat by pecking at; of birds [syn: {pick up}]

3: kiss lightly [syn: {smack}]

4: eat like a bird [syn: {pick at}, {peck at}]

5: bother persistently with trivial complaints; "She nags her

husband all day long" [syn: {nag}, {hen-peck}]

PEEK

The command in most {microcomputer} {BASIC}s for reading

memory contents (a byte) at an absolute address. POKE is the

corresponding command to write a value to an absolute address.

This is often extended to mean the corresponding constructs in

any {High Level Language}.

Much hacking on small {microcomputer}s without {MMU}s consists

of "peek"ing around memory, more or less at random, to find

the location where the system keeps interesting stuff. Long

(and variably accurate) lists of such addresses for various

computers circulate (see {interrupt list}). The results of

"poke"s at these addresses may be highly useful, mildly

amusing, useless but neat, or total {lossage} (see {killer

poke}).

Since a {real operating system} provides useful, higher-level

services for the tasks commonly performed with peeks and pokes

on micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level

memory groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?"

is diagnostic of the {newbie}. Of course, {operating system}

{kernel}s often have to do exactly this; a real {C} hacker

would unhesitatingly, if unportably, assign an absolute

address to a pointer variable and indirect through it.

[{Jargon File}]

(1995-01-31)