Early-boot Memes

Someone actually committed a function called myisspace() to the Linux kernel that checks if a character is a space by comparing it to... the letter 'j'. And the comment? "Close enough approximation." In a codebase that powers billions of devices worldwide, where every line is scrutinized by some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet, someone decided that 'j' is basically a space character. The ASCII value of 'j' is 106, while space is 32. That's not even close! But hey, it's for a "simple command-line parser for early boot" so I guess standards are optional when your OS is still rubbing the sleep out of its eyes. The beauty here is imagining the code review: "Yeah, just use 'j' instead of ' ' (space). Ship it." This is either galaxy-brain optimization or someone's Friday afternoon commit that somehow made it through. Either way, it's living rent-free in one of the most important codebases in computing history.