ad-hockery

ad-hockery
/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> /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)

/ad-hok'*r-ee/ n. [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.