monkey patch

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Apparently from earlier guerilla patch (code that sneakily changes other code), understood as gorilla patch. A monkey patch was then a more carefully written instance of such a patch.[1] Or simply derived from monkey (to mess with, verb).

Noun

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monkey patch (plural monkey patches)

  1. (programming slang) A patch which alters the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.

Verb

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monkey patch (third-person singular simple present monkey patches, present participle monkey patching, simple past and past participle monkey patched)

  1. (programming slang, transitive) To alter the behaviour of a program by forcibly overriding aspects of the original code at runtime.
    • 2007, Philip C. Plumlee, Test Driven Ajax (on Rails):
      Even though that works with some browsers, others provide Anchor objects without click() methods. Add this magic code to your application.js, to Monkey Patch a JavaScript click() event:

References

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  1. ^ Alexander Limi, Shane Hathaway (2005 December 23) “Monkey patch”, in Plone Foundation[1], archived from the original on 2008-06-04

Further reading

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