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Glite Dictionary
💻 No action taken 🐎 Unwilling to act
balking

balking

1 8.7
A program behaviour where a function stops and does nothing if conditions are not met
  • noun
  • /ˈbɔːkɪŋ/
  • Specialized
translation icon : comportamiento de rechazo

Examples

  • After initial balking by some of the larger cities, the vast majority of municipalities, including Minneapolis, have adopted some version of variable rates.

    Academic text (1995)

  • Mommy's balking.

    Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003)

  • The software experienced balking when the required updates were not installed, preventing the user from launching it.

  • During testing, the application showed balking behavior due to missing dependencies that needed to be resolved first.

  • He noticed that the program was balking at certain inputs, returning errors instead of executing the necessary functions.

Synonyms

balkiness
vsbalking
  • US
9.3

Being slow to start or likely to stop suddenly

is a deliberate immediate return when conditions are not satisfied

Surface Forms

balking singular
balkings plural

Morphology

balking = balk (semi-transparent) = balk + ing

The noun is a gerund/nominalization of 'balk' and the computing sense extends the basic meaning to a technical context (refusing to proceed), making the relation clear but specialized.

Etymology

Balking in computing keeps the same idea from balk, which means 'to stop short'. A balking method sees a missing requirement and simply stops and does nothing instead of trying to run.