ad-hockery

   [Purdue]

   1.  Gratuitous  assumptions made inside certain programs, esp. expert
   systems,  which  lead  to the appearance of semi-intelligent behavior
   but  are  in  fact entirely arbitrary. For example, fuzzy-matching of
   input  tokens  that might be typing errors against a symbol table can
   make it look as though a program knows how to spell.

   2.  Special-case  code  to  cope  with  some awkward input that would
   otherwise  cause  a  program  to {choke}, presuming normal inputs are
   dealt with in some cleaner and more regular way.

   Also  called ad-hackery, ad-hocity (/ad-hos'@-tee/), ad-crockery. See
   also {ELIZA effect}.

   

   This is {ad-hockery} in action.

   (The  next cartoon in the Crunchly saga is 74-08-18. The previous one
   is 73-07-29.)

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {ad-hockery}{big-endian}{ELIZA effect}{kluge}]