Workaround

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The Jargon File

Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7,
a public domain document of hacker jargon.

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workaround
Usage: n.


workaround: n.

  1. A temporary kluge used to bypass, mask, or otherwise avoid a bug or misfeature in some system. Theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by fixes; in practice, customers often find themselves living with workarounds for long periods of time. "The code died on NUL characters in the input, so I fixed it to interpret them as spaces." "That's not a fix, that's a workaround!"
  2. A procedure to be employed by the user in order to do what some currently non-working feature should do. Hypothetical example: "Using META-F7 crashes the 4.43 build of Weemax, but as a workaround you can type CTRL-R, then SHIFT-F5, and delete the remaining cruft by hand."

Sources

Source: workaround, in The Jargon File, version 4.4.7.


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