As someone recently asked about this: "snarf" is an old computer lingo
term which typically means to suck large amounts of data from one place to
another, often someone's computer code, without the owner's knowledge but
with the implicit assumption that he wouldn't mind.
Such as: to make the Newton Java Asteroids game, I snarfed John Hall's
Asteroids applet source and made mods to it.
Here's what the Hacker's dictionary says:
snarf /snarf/ vt. 1. To grab, especially to grab a large document or file
for the purpose of using it with or without the author's permission. See
also BLT. 2. [in the UNIX community[ To fetch a file or a set of files
across a network. See also blast. This term was mainstream in the late
1960s, meaning 'to eat piggishly'. It may still have this connotation in
context. "He's in the snarfing phase of hacking -- FTPing megs of stuff a
day." 3. To acquire, with little conern for legal forms or politesse (but
not quite by stealing). "They were giving away samples, so I snarfed a
bunch of them." 4. Syn. for slurp. "This program starts by snarfing the
entire database into core, then..."
Sean
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