meaning of pathological2
1. Of or pertaining to pathology.
2. pathological 1. [scientific computation] Used of a data set that is grossly atypical of normal expected input, especially one that exposes a weakness or bug in whatever algorithm one is using. An algorithm that can be broken by pathological inputs may still be useful if such inputs are very unlikely to occur in practice. 2. When used of test input, implies that it was purposefully engineered as a worst case. The implication in both senses is that the data is spectacularly ill-conditioned or that someone had to explicitly set out to break the algorithm in order to come up with such a crazy example. 3. Also said of an unlikely collection of circumstances. "If the network is down and comes up halfway through the execution of that command by root, the system may just crash. " "Yes, but thats a pathological case. " Often used to dismiss the case from discussion, with the implication that the consequences are acceptable, since they will happen so infrequently if at all that it doesnt seem worth going to the extra trouble to handle that case see sense 1. [Jargon File] Path Pascal Parallel extension of Pascal. Processes have shared access to data objects. Constraints on their synchronisation are specified in a path expression. ["An Overview of Path Pascals Design", R. H. Campbell, SIGPLAN Notices 159:13-24 Sep 1980]. pathspec pathname pattern matching 1. A function is defined to take arguments of a particular type, form or value. When applying the function to its actual arguments it is necessary to match the type, form or value of the actual arguments against the formal arguments in some definition. For example, the function length [] = 0 length x:xs = 1 + length xs uses pattern matching in its argument to distinguish a null list from a non-null one. There are well known algorithm for translating pattern matching into conditional expressions such as "if" or "case". E. g. the above function could be transformed to length l = case l of [] -> 0 x:xs -> 1 : length xs Pattern matching is usually performed in textual order though there are languages which match more specific patterns before less specific ones. 2. Descriptive of a type of language or utility such as awk or Perl which is suited to searching for strings or patterns in input data, usually using some kind of regular expression.
3. caused by or altered by or manifesting disease or pathology; "diseased tonsils"; "a morbid growth"; "pathologic tissue"; "pathological bodily
">processes"
Related Words
pathological | pathological process | pathological state | pathologically |
