ad-hockery

jargon /ad-hok'*r-ee/ (Purdue) 1. Gratuitous assumptions

made inside certain programs, especially expert systems,

which lead to the appearance of semi-intelligent behaviour 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 fail, 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.

[Jargon File]

(1995-01-05)