The Java Language Specification

by James Gosling, Bill Joy and Guy Steele
(Addison-Wesley, 1996)

The large index of this book (pages 767 to 821) includes numerous bogus, obscure, self-referential and silly entries. In fact, there are so many of them around that a special entry indexes them! It reads (on page 788):

index entries
bogus
Fibonacci numbers, 783
prime numbers, 801
warp factors, 820
obscure
Bell, Alexander Graham, 769
Bovik, Harry, 770
Fifth Dimension, 784
first cat, 784
[...]
self-referential
index entries, 788
not, see Russell's paradox
[...]
silly
banana-fana, 769
[...]

The complete entry includes a whopping 39 lines. The bogus entries include things like:

Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610

Worse still is the “prime numbers” entry, which lists every prime number from 1 to 826 (the number of pages in the book) -- 142 values, which require twenty lines.

The entry for “Star Trek” lists pages 793, 805 and 820. All of these pages are in the index. Page 793 includes the index entry for “make it so”, and page 820 has an entry for “warp factors”. I found nothing on page 805 that is related to the issue, except maybe for the catch-all entry about self-reference (which naturally includes its own page).

Special thanks to Peter Norvig for contributing this item.

Book In-Jokes in... The Java Language Specification
Find this book		by James Gosling, Bill Joy and Guy Steele (Addison-Wesley, 1996) The large index of this book (pages 767 to 821) includes numerous bogus, obscure, self-referential and silly entries. In fact, there are so many of them around that a special entry indexes them! It reads (on page 788): index entries bogus Fibonacci numbers, 783 prime numbers, 801 warp factors, 820 obscure Bell, Alexander Graham, 769 Bovik, Harry, 770 Fifth Dimension, 784 first cat, 784 [...] self-referential index entries, 788 not, see Russell's paradox [...] silly banana-fana, 769 [...] The complete entry includes a whopping 39 lines. The bogus entries include things like: Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 Worse still is the “prime numbers” entry, which lists every prime number from 1 to 826 (the number of pages in the book) -- 142 values, which require twenty lines. The entry for “Star Trek” lists pages 793, 805 and 820. All of these pages are in the index. Page 793 includes the index entry for “make it so”, and page 820 has an entry for “warp factors”. I found nothing on page 805 that is related to the issue, except maybe for the catch-all entry about self-reference (which naturally includes its own page). Special thanks to Peter Norvig for contributing this item. [Added 2000-01-01]