meaning of patch

1. A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, esp. upon an old garment to cover a hole.
2. A small piece of anything used to repair a breach; as, a patch on a kettle, a roof, etc.
3. A small piece of black silk stuck on the face, or neck, to hide a defect, or to heighten beauty.
4. A piece of greased cloth or leather used as wrapping for a rifle ball, to make it fit the bore.
5. Fig. : Anything regarded as a patch; a small piece of ground; a tract; a plot; as, scattered patches of trees or growing corn.
6. A block on the muzzle of a gun, to do away with the effect of dispart, in sighting.
7. A paltry fellow; a rogue; a ninny; a fool.
8. To mend by sewing on a piece or pieces of cloth, leather, or the like; as, to patch a coat.
9. To mend with pieces; to repair with pieces festened on; to repair clumsily; as, to patch the roof of a house.
10. To adorn, as the face, with a patch or patches.
11. To make of pieces or patches; to repair as with patches; to arrange in a hasty or clumsy manner; -- generally with up; as, to patch up a truce.
12. patch 1. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. Distinguished from a diff or mod by the fact that a patch is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the program; the classical examples are instructions modified by using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to the binary executable of a program originally written in an HLL. Compare one-line fix. 2. To insert a patch into a piece of code. 3. [in the Unix world] A diff. 4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a patching program. IBM systems often receive updates to the operating system in the form of absolute hexadecimal patches. If you have modified your OS, you have to disassemble these back to the source code. The patches might later be corrected by other patches on top of them patches were said to "grow scar tissue". The result was often a convoluted patch space and headaches galore. There is a classic story of a tiger team penetrating a secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent in binary patches or, indeed, any patches that you cant - or dont - inspect and examine before installing. They couldnt find any trap doors or any way to penetrate security of IBMs OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office remember, these were official military types who were purportedly on official business, swiped some IBM stationery, and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the trapdoor they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. The installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something about proper procedures. 5. Larry Walls "patch" utility, which automatically applies a patch to a set of source code or other text files. It accepts input in any of the four forms output by the Unix diff utility and uses many helpful heuristics to determine how to apply them. Diff and patch are the standard way of producing and applying updates to Unix files ditributed via Usenet and the Internet, both have been ported to other operating systems. See your nearest GNU archive site. [Jargon File]
13. a piece of soft material that covers and protects an injured part of the body

Related Words

patch | patch pocket | patch pumpkin | patch test | patch up | patchboard | patchcord | patched | patcher | patchery | patchily | patchiness | patching | patchingly | patchouli | patchouly | patchwork | patchwork quilt | patchy |

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