wart
A small, crocky feature that sticks out of an otherwise clean design. Something
conspicuous for localised ugliness, especially a special-case exception to a
general rule. For example, in some versions of "csh(1)", single quotes
literalise every character inside them except "!". In ANSI C, the "?" syntax
used for obtaining ASCII characters in a foreign environment is a wart. See also
miswart.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
warm boot « Warm Silence Software « Warp « wart
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