< programming > (From amateur electronics and radio) A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various magic things in programs.
One current example is the " PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as the Blue Book which has recipes for things like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into voodoo programming , but are useful for hackers trying to monkey up small programs in unknown languages. This function is analogous to the role of phrasebooks in human languages.
[ Jargon File ]
(1994-11-04)