leaning toothpick syndrome

noun

The situation in which a quoted string expression becomes difficult to read because it contains a large number of escape characters, usually backslashes, to avoid delimiter collision.

Similar
LTS
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Meanings

nounleaning toothpick syndrome (uncountable)
  1. uncountablecomputingThe situation in which a quoted string expression becomes difficult to read because it contains a large number of escape characters, usually backslashes, to avoid delimiter collision.

    Synonyms: LTS

Synonyms & antonyms

nounThe situation in which a quoted string expression becomes difficult to read because it contains a large number of escape characters, usually backslashes, to avoid delimiter collision.

Similar
LTS

Origin

Introduced in the official Perl documentation, in reference to the shape of the backslash character.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

leaning toothpick syndrome. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/leaning%20toothpick%20syndrome

MLA

“leaning toothpick syndrome.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/leaning%20toothpick%20syndrome. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “leaning toothpick syndrome,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/leaning%20toothpick%20syndrome.

Source: leaning toothpick syndrome on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.