Humorous Terminology
To do an eyeball search is to look for something specific in a mass of code or data with one's own native optical sensors, as opposed to using some sort of pattern matching software like grep or any other automated search tool. Also known as vgrep or ogrep, i.e., "visual/optical grep", and in the IBM mainframe world as IEBIBALL. The most important application of eyeball search / vgrep in software engineering is vdiff.
In various disciplines it is also called the "eyeball technique" or "eyeball method" (of data assessment).
"Eyeballing" is the most common and readily available method of initial data assessment.
Experts in pattern recognition maintain that the "eyeball" technique is still the most effective procedure for searching arbitrary, possibly unknown structures in data.
In the military, applying this sort of search to real-world terrain is often referred to as "using the Mark I Eyeball" (or "Mark 0", "Mark 0 Mod 1") device, the U.S. military adopting it in 1950s. The term is an allusion on military nomenclature: Mark I, Mark VIII, etc.
Read more about this topic: Visual Inspection
Famous quotes containing the word humorous:
“Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane Love, and as soon forgot:
As ridlingly distempered, cold and hot,”
—John Donne (1572–1631)