JargonFile/entries/crock.txt

crock

n. [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.