Splat

n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the asterisk ('*') character (ASCII 0101010). This may derive from the 'squashed-bug' appearance of the asterisk on many early line printers.

2. [MIT] Name used by some people for the '#' character (ASCII 0100011).

3. [Rochester Institute of Technology] The command key on a Mac (same as ALT, sense 2).

4. [Stanford] Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character.

This character is also called 'blobby' and 'frob', among other names; it is sometimes used by mathematicians as a notation for 'tensor product'.

5. [Stanford] Name for the semi-mythical extended ASCII circle-plus character.

6. Canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the local interpretation of 'splat' is.

With ITS and WAITS gone, senses 4-6 are now nearly obsolete.

See also ASCII.