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line noise: n. 1. [techspeak] Spurious characters due to electrical noise in a
communications link, especially an RS-232 serial connection. Line noise
may be induced by poor connections, interference or crosstalk from other
circuits, electrical storms, cosmic rays, or
(notionally) birds crapping on the phone wires. 2. Any chunk of data in a file or elsewhere that looks like the
results of line noise in sense 1. 3. Text that is theoretically a readable text or program source but
employs syntax so bizarre that it looks like line noise in senses 1 or 2.
Yes, there are languages this ugly. The canonical example is
TECO; it is often claimed that “TECO's input
syntax is indistinguishable from line noise.” Other
non-WYSIWYG editors, such as Multics qed and Unix ed, in
the hands of a real hacker, also qualify easily, as do deliberately
obfuscated languages such as INTERCAL.
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