mung (computer term)

{{Short description|Computer jargon}}

Mung or munge is computer jargon for a series of potentially destructive or irrevocable changes to a piece of data or a file.{{cite web|last1=Raymond |first1=Eric S. |title=The Jargon File, version 4.4.8 |url=http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mung.html |website=catb.org |accessdate=15 June 2015 |url-status=unfit |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615165058/http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mung.html |archivedate=June 15, 2015 }} It is sometimes used for vague data transformation steps that are not yet clear to the speaker.{{cite book|last1=Cross|first1=David|title=Data Munging with Perl|date=2001|publisher=Manning|location=Greenwich, CT|page=4}} Common munging operations include removing punctuation or HTML tags, data parsing, filtering, and transformation.

The term was coined in 1958 in the Tech Model Railroad Club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1960 the backronym "Mash Until No Good" was created to describe Mung, and by 1976 it was revised to "Mung Until No Good", making it one of the first recursive acronyms.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=12 August 1976|title=Jargon File, version 1.0.0.01|url=http://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.01.dos.txt|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190223225535/http://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.0.0.01.dos.txt|archive-date=23 February 2019|access-date=4 February 2021|website=Jargon File}} It lived on as a recursive command in the editing language TECO.{{cite web|last1=Gesswein |first1=David |title=OS/8 Help File |url=http://www.pdp8.net/os/os8/os8_cmd.shtml |accessdate=15 June 2015 |url-status=unfit |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150615181221/http://www.pdp8.net/os/os8/os8_cmd.shtml |archivedate=June 15, 2015 }}

Munging may also describe the constructive operation of tying together systems and interfaces that were not specifically designed to interoperate (also called 'duct-taping'). Munging can also describe the processing or filtering of raw data into another form.

As the "no good" part of the acronym implies, munging often involves irrevocable destruction of data.