(MIT, opposite of line feed) 1. To feed paper through a
printer the wrong way by one line (most printers can't do
this). On a display terminal, to move the cursor up to the
previous line of the screen. "To print "X squared", you just
output "X", line starve, "2", line feed." (The line starve
causes the "2" to appear on the line above the "X", and the
line feed gets back to the original line.)
2. A character (or character sequence) that causes a terminal
to perform this action. ASCII 26, also called SUB or
control-Z, was one common line-starve character in the days
before microcomputers and the X3.64 terminal standard.
Unlike "line feed", "line starve" is *not* standard ASCII
terminology. Even among hackers it is considered silly.
3. (Proposed) A sequence such as \c (used in System V
echo, as well as nroff and troff) that suppresses a
newline or other character(s) that would normally be
emitted.
[Jargon File]
(1995-02-03)
Nearby terms:
line probing « lines of code « lines per minute « line starve » Lingo » LINGOL » link
