Procrustean assignment

English

Etymology

After the legendary highwayman Procrustes, who stretched or cut his victims to make them fit a bed.

Noun

Procrustean assignment (uncountable)

1. (computing, dated, rare) A form of assignment to fixed-length string variables in which a shorter value is padded to the necessary length while a longer one is truncated.
   • 1982, Steven Vickers, Robin Bradbeer, Sinclair ZX Spectrum: BASIC Programming:

     […] the string that is being assigned to it is cut off on the right if it is too long, or filled out with spaces if it is too short - this is called Procrustean assignment […]

   • 1983, Ian Stewart, Robin Jones, Machine code and better BASIC, page 51:

     […] that Procrustean assignment that the Manual goes on about: string arrays always have a fixed length of word.

   • 1985, Sharon Zardetto Aker, T/S 2068 basics and beyond, page 38:

     Because the T/S uses procrustean assignment for string arrays, there are some uses for single-element arrays.

Related terms

• procrustean bed