1. [n]  a protective cloth covering for an injured eye
2. [n]  sewing that repairs a worn or torn place in a garment
3. [n]  a piece of cloth used as decoration or to mend or cover a hole
4. [n]  a connection intended to be used for a limited time
5. [n]  a small contrasting part of something; "a bald spot"; "a leopard's spots"; "a patch of clouds"; "patches of thin ice"; "a fleck of red"
6. [n]  a short set of commands to correct a bug in a computer program
7. [n]  a small area of ground covered by specific vegetation; "a bean plot"; "a cabbage patch"; "a briar patch"
8. [v]  repair by adding pieces; "She pieced the china cup"
9. [v]  mend or supply with a patch; "patch a hole"
10. [v]  to join or unite the pieces of; "patch the skirt"
11. [v]  provide with a patch; also used metaphorically; "The field was patched with snow"

Patch
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1. \Patch\, n. [OE. pacche; of uncertain origin, perh. for
   placche; cf. Prov. E. platch patch, LG. plakk, plakke.]
   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.
            Patches set upon a little breach.     --Shak.
   2. Hence: 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.
            Your black patches you wear variously. --Beau. & Fl.
   4. (Gun.) 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.
            Employed about this patch of ground.  --Bunyan.
   6. (Mil.) 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. [Obs. or
      Colloq.] ``Thou scurvy patch.'' --Shak.
   {Patch ice}, ice in overlapping pieces in the sea.
   {Soft patch}, a patch for covering a crack in a metallic
      vessel, as a steam boiler, consisting of soft material, as
      putty, covered and held in place by a plate bolted or
      riveted fast.
   

2. \Patch\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Patched}; p. pr. & vb. n.
   {Patching}.]
   1. To mend by sewing on a piece or pieces of cloth, leather,
      or the like; as, to patch a coat.
   2. To mend with pieces; to repair with pieces festened on; to
      repair clumsily; as, to patch the roof of a house.
   3. To adorn, as the face, with a patch or patches.
            Ladies who patched both sides of their faces.
                                                  --Spectator.
   4. 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. ``If you'll patch a
      quarrel.'' --Shak.
   

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 can't - or don't - inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't find any trap doors or any way to penetrate security of IBM's 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 Wall's "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]