cookbook
[from amateur electronics and radio] n. A book of small
code segments that the reader can use to do various
magic
things in programs. One current example is the `
PostScript
Language Tutorial and Cookbook' by Adobe Systems, Inc
(Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3) which has recipes for things
like wrapping text around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts.
Cookbooks, slavishly followed, can lead one into {voodoo
programming}, but are useful for hackers trying to
monkey up
small programs in unknown languages. This is analogous to the role
of phrasebooks in human languages.