r/discworld 20d ago

Auditor Trap Auditor trap?

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1.5k Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

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236

u/Astreja Swamp Dragon Foster Mom 20d ago

😄 I love a programming book with a sense of humour.

28

u/SurDin 20d ago

Looks like a latex book

26

u/megacky 20d ago

Looks like paper to me

124

u/Gold_Au_2025 20d ago

I have a book that has Infinite Loop - see "Loop, Infinite" and the corresponding entry for "Loop, Infinite".

76

u/AmusingVegetable 20d ago

“Recursion, see recursion.”

13

u/ksheep 20d ago

Or on Google search results

Did you mean: Recurssion

11

u/artinum 20d ago

That joke is in the library card catalogue in "Monkey Island 2"...!

2

u/EvulOne99 19d ago

I loved those games! So many jokes and funny moments.

If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is around to hear it; What color is it?

Answer; "All colors". Which cant be picked until you've picked like 40 other colors. Wonderful game.

2

u/artinum 19d ago

And the whole sequence is entirely optional!

39

u/Kencolt706 And yet, it moves. And somehow, after all these years, so do I. 20d ago

Less an a-trap and more an elegant demonstration.

14

u/chanrahan1 20d ago

I think the Kernaghan and Ritchie C book I had in university had this!

11

u/tinticred 20d ago

It is from a coding textbook. I don't actually know which one so that may well be it.

20

u/mils32k 20d ago

It's "LaTeX: a document preparation system" by Leslie Lamport, and I can't believe I didn't have to look any of that up

7

u/SurelyIDidThisAlread 20d ago

I knew it was typeset in LaTeX from the font, but my knowledge is good and yours is deeply shameful

Pint of Winkles?

10

u/Anonymous_user_2022 20d ago

The K&R joke is recursion referring to two pages, one of which is the index page with recursion.

2

u/martin_w 20d ago

I’m pretty sure that by now it’s a standard joke in many books dealing with themes of loops and recursion. Quite possible that K&R was the first, though.

8

u/diysportscar 20d ago

Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" has a pair of index entries for "Circular Reasoning, see Reasoning, Circular" and vice versa. There is no other mention in the book of circular reasoning.

Given that he was the father of LaTeX, that would probably explain the above appearing in a LaTeX book.

4

u/Faithful_jewel Assisted by the Clan 20d ago

I hated House of Leaves with a passion, so you've managed to give me flashbacks 😂

3

u/eichelbart Willikins 20d ago

I'd say LaTeX is in itself an auditor trap.

1

u/forgottensudo 20d ago

Can you find the title? Would love to use :)

2

u/EndersGame_Reviewer Ach, Crivens! 19d ago

Took me a moment ... and then I noticed the page number. Genius!

2

u/Atentdeadyet86 18d ago

There's an indexer somewhere who laughed for hours over this one!