avatar n. Syn.

[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god] 1. Among people working
on virtual reality and [689]cyberspace interfaces, an avatar is an
icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. The term
is sometimes used on [690]MUDs. 2. [CMU, Tektronix] [691]root,
[692]superuser. There are quite a few Unix machines on which the name
of the superuser account is `avatar' rather than `root'. This quirk
was originated by a CMU hacker who found the terms `root' and
`superuser' unimaginative, and thought `avatar' might better impress
people with the responsibility they were accepting.
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awk /awk/

1. n. [Unix techspeak] An interpreted language for massaging text data
developed by Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan (the
name derives from their initials). It is characterized by C-like
syntax, a declaration-free approach to variable typing and
declarations, associative arrays, and field-oriented text processing.
See also [696]Perl. 2. n. Editing term for an expression awkward to
manipulate through normal [697]regexp facilities (for example, one
containing a [698]newline). 3. vt. To process data using awk(1).
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