crunch

   1.  vi.  To  process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way.
   Connotes an essentially trivial operation that is nonetheless painful
   to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality's being embedded in
   a   loop  from  1  to  1,000,000,000.  "FORTRAN  programs  do  mostly
   {number-crunching}."

   2.  vt.  To  reduce  the  size of a file by a complicated scheme that
   produces  bit  configurations  completely  unrelated  to the original
   data,  such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking something
   like  a  paper  document  would if somebody crunched the paper into a
   wad.)  Since  such  compression  usually takes more computations than
   simpler  methods  such  as  run-length  encoding,  the term is doubly
   appropriate.  (This  meaning is usually used in the construction file
   crunch(ing)   to   distinguish   it   from  {number-crunching}.)  See
   {compress}.

   3. n. The character #. Used at XEROX and CMU, among other places. See
   {ASCII}.

   4.  vt.  To squeeze program source into a minimum-size representation
   that  will  still  compile  or  execute.  The  term  came  into being
   specifically  for  a  famous  program  on the BBC micro that crunched
   BASIC  source  in  order to make it run more quickly (it was a wholly
   interpretive   BASIC,   so   the   number  of  characters  mattered).
   {Obfuscated  C  Contest}  entries  are  often crunched; see the first
   example under that entry.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {ASCII}{buffer overflow}{Commonwealth Hackish}{compress}{grind}{grovel}{huff}{massage}{munch}{number-crunching}{pixel sort}]