lite
<spelling>
(Misspelling of "light", when used to mean "lightweight") A suffix denoting a scaled-down or crippled product, often designed to be distributed without charge, e.g. on a magazine coverdisk. An example is pklite.
Last updated: 1995-10-06
literal
A constant made available to a process, by inclusion in the executable text. Most modern systems do not allow texts to modify themselves during execution, so literals are indeed constant; their value is written at compile-time and is read-only at run time.
In contrast, values placed in variables or files and accessed by the process via a symbolic name, can be changed during execution. This may be an asset. For example, messages can be given in a choice of languages by placing the translation in a file. Literals are used when such modification is not desired. The name of the file mentioned above (not its content), or a physical constant such as 3.14159, might be coded as a literal. Literals can be accessed quickly, a potential advantage of their use.Last updated: 1996-01-23
literate programming
<programming, text>
Combining the use of a text formatting language such as TeX and a conventional programming language so as to maintain documentation and source code together.
Literate programming may use the inverse comment convention. Perl's literate programming system is called pod.Last updated: 2003-09-24
literature
The literature. Computer-science journals and other publications, vaguely gestured at to answer a question that the speaker believes is trivial. Thus, one might answer an annoying question by saying "It's in the literature." Oppose Knuth, which has no connotation of triviality.Last updated: 1994-11-04
LITHE
Object-oriented with extensible syntax. "LITHE: A Language Combining a Flexible Syntax and Classes", D. Sandberg, Conf Rec 9th Ann ACM Sym POPL, ACM 1982, pp.142-145.lithium lick
NeXT employees who have had too much attention from their esteemed founder, Steve Jobs, are said to have "lithium lick" when they begin to show signs of Jobsian fervour and repeat the most recent catch phrases in normal conversation, e.g. "It just works, right out of the box!" [Jargon File]LitProg
literate programmingLITTLE
A typeless language used to produce machine-independent software. LITTLE has been used to implement SETL. "Guide to the LITTLE Language", D. Shields, LITTLE Newsletter 33, Courant Inst (Aug 1977).little-endian
<data, architecture>
A computer architecture in which, within a given 16- or 32-bit word, bytes at lower addresses have lower significance (the word is stored "little-end-first"). The PDP-11 and VAX families of computers and Intel microprocessors and a lot of communications and networking hardware are little-endian.
The term is sometimes used to describe the ordering of units other than bytes; most often, bits within a byte. Compare big-endian, middle-endian. See NUXI problem. [Jargon File]Last updated: 1995-08-16
Little Smalltalk
A line-oriented near-subset of Smalltalk-80 written in C by Tim Budd <[email protected]>. Version 3 runs on Unix, IBM PC, Atari and VMS. ftp://cs.orst.edu/pub/budd/. ["A Little Smalltalk", Timothy Budd, A-W 1987].Nearby terms:
Listserv ♦ Liszt ♦ lite ♦ literal ♦ literate programming ♦ literature
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