line eater, the: n. obs. [Usenet] 1. A bug in some now-obsolete
versions of the netnews software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes
of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the text of
the article start with a space or tab. This bug was quickly
personified as a mythical creature called the `line eater', and
postings often included a dummy line of `line eater food'.
Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab
wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there _was_
a space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the food
_and_ the beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting.
The practice of `sacrificing to the line eater' continued for some
time after the bug had been nailed to the wall, and is still
humorously referred to. The bug itself was still occasionally
reported to be lurking in some mail-to-netnews gateways as late as
1991. 2. See NSA line eater.
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