What Does Munge Mean?
The term “munge” is most commonly used in IT to refer to alterations or changes to a file or data structure. Common definitions describe “munge” as an action that is “potentially destructive or irrevocable.” Other colloquial descriptions of mungeing involve the mashing or imprecise combination of different data sets, as in the acronym MUNG for “mash until no good.”
Techopedia Explains Munge
Prior to its use in IT, the term “munge” came from the English lexicon where it referred to different types of chewing or mumbling. As it became used in the IT world to describe user actions, it started to be associated with the process of blending, mashing or otherwise messing around with data. It is important to note that, as in the above definition, “munge” actions are “potentially” destructive. That means that mungeing will not necessarily destroy something or cause it to malfunction, but those actions have the potential to cause these types of problems. Some commonly used examples involve changes to HTML tags, alteration of punctuation in text, or the complete rewriting or alternative parsing of a function, routine or program.
