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legal: adj. Loosely used to mean ‘in accordance with all the relevant
rules’, esp. in connection with some set of constraints defined by
software. “The older =+ alternate for += is no longer legal syntax
in ANSI C.” “This parser processes each line of legal input
the moment it sees the trailing linefeed.” Hackers often model their
work as a sort of game played with the environment in which the objective
is to maneuver through the thicket of ‘natural laws’ to achieve
a desired objective. Their use of legal is flavored as much by this game-playing
sense as by the more conventional one having to do with courts and lawyers.
Compare language lawyer,
legalese.
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