crock

   [from the American scatologism crock of shit]

   1.  An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made
   cleaner.  For  example, using small integers to represent error codes
   without  the  program  interpreting  them  to  the  user  (as in, for
   example, Unix make(1), which returns code 139 for a process that dies
   due to {segfault}).

   2.  A  technique  that  works acceptably, but which is quite prone to
   failure  if  disturbed  in  the  least.  For  example,  a  too-clever
   programmer   might   write  an  assembler  which  mapped  instruction
   mnemonics  to  numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends
   far  too  intimately  on  the particular bit patterns of the opcodes.
   (For  another  example  of  programming  with  a dependence on actual
   opcode values, see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A.) Many crocks have
   a  tightly  woven,  almost  completely  unmodifiable  structure.  See
   {kluge}, {brittle}. The adjectives crockish and crocky, and the nouns
   crockishness and crockitude, are also used.

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {kludge}{kluge}{LISP}{quick-and-dirty}{randomness}{real hack}{wart}]