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.
On most web browsers you can double click any word on this page to see what definitions I have for that word.
This dictionary server is not an authoratative source of information for anything. Like almost everything at sorabji.com, I set this up for my own purposes. In this case the purpose is to
browse words and ideas at random. An automatically generated page that produces Random Words
is my gateway to this resource. Below is a list of some of my favorite words discovered here. I also have attempted a word of the day type of thing,
in which I simply post interesting words that I find through the Wordswarm Random Words Pages. I have made available the complete 1828 Webster's Dictionary, which many feel is the greatest English dictionary ever published.
Other random links of mine include the Sorabji.com Random Link, which sends you to one of
over 7,000 pages on my web sites; the Face Server produces random images of
human faces; clicking the Random WAYD link shows you a random posting to my "What Are You Doing?" board; the Random USPS
Mailbox link sends you to a page with information about a random mailbox; and the random pictures page page of sorabji.com shows one of over 11,000 random images any time you load the page. On an unrelated note, I have begun making several thousand pages of legal documents searchable.
