line eater, the

line eater, the
 n. obs.

   1. [Usenet] A bug in some now-obsolete versions of the netnews
   software that used to eat up to BUFSIZ bytes of the article text. The
   bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space
   or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called
   the line eater, and postings often included a dummy line of line eater
   food. Ironically, line eater `food' not beginning with a space or tab
   wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there was a
   space or tab before it, then the line eater would eat the food and the
   beginning of the text it was supposed to be protecting. The practice
   of sacrificing to the line eater continued for some time after the bug
   had been {nailed to the wall}, and is still humorously referred to.
   The bug itself was still occasionally reported to be lurking in some
   mail-to-netnews gateways as late as 1991.

   2. See {NSA line eater}.