Prepend and friends

[S Charker <scharker -at- SYNFLUX -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

Steven Ward asked about the word "prepend".

Like Websters, FOLDOC ( http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html )
lists 'prepend' as jargon, which amuses me because in context "append" is
just as much jargon and that's not listed at all. The definition is: "(by
analogy with 'append') To prefix or add to the beginning."

I encountered the word in the context of computer data structures, so long
ago that I no longer have the text books. The example that's stuck in my
mind is that, 'prepend' adds a new record to the top of a file, as opposed
to 'append' which adds a new record to the end of a file, but I think the
more usual usage is actually more to do with bits in words than records in
files.

IMO, "prefix" is unlikely to be an appropriate substitute. If that level of
detail about the internals of data storage is important to your readers,
they want "prepend". If it's not, then pre-, inter-, middle-, or
muddle-fixing are irrelevant.

"peripend" (copyright Philomena Hoopes, TechWhirl 1999) is also unlikely to
be an appropriate substitute for "prepend", but it's such a splendidly
euphonious linguistic malformation that seems to me to deserve a long and
honourable life. Any advances on:

"peripendant" (n) (Gk peri- round; Latin pendere to hang). A leaky program
that hangs around in memory.  Hence "peripendent" (adj);  "peripendently"
(adv).

Of course, it'll need protection against the forces of  obfuscation, which
might attack with such bastardisations as:

"peripendentializate" (vb)" "antiperipendant" (n) A program for stopping
memory leaks in other people's programs; "anteperipendant" (n) A program for
peri - I mean pre- venting peripendants; "deperipendantializator" (Marketing
variant: DPP) (n) A program for finding peripendent code in one's own
programs."

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Sandra Charker
mailto:scharker -at- connectives -dot- com

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