English

Noun

pling ‎(plural plings)

1. (computing, dated) The symbol ! (an exclamation mark).
   • 1989, "John Littler, John Maher", Computers in the laboratory: a student guide to microprocessor interfacing

     This illustrates the order in which bytes are poked into memory with the pling operator.

   • 1994, "C.P. Brown", HAhAhA (on Internet newsgroup comp.sys.acorn.advocacy)

     IMO, prefixing a directory name with a pling so that a program within it is run when you double click on it is a rather untidy way to do things.

   • 1994, Stewart Palmer, Mark Moir, Developing CD-ROM products for Acorn machines

     Make sure that you consider ISO 9660 restrictions on the use of characters in disc, directory and file names. Only upper case alpha and numeric characters plus the underscore (_) and pling (!) can be used as legal characters.

   • 1996, "Tim Wiser", Pling thing revisited (on newsgroup comp.sys.acorn.apps)

     Acorn Computing used to be big offenders when it came to referring to applications by their pling-inclusive names. They loved it. Unfortunately it made their articles sound silly (for want of a better adjective).

Usage notes

• Associated with Acorn Computers.