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slop

   error but in only one of two directions.  For example, if you need
   a piece of wire 10 feet long and have to guess when you cut it,
   you make very sure to cut it too long, by a large amount if
   necessary, rather than too short by even a little bit, because you
   can always cut off the slop but you can't paste it back on again.
   When discrete quantities are involved, slop is often introduced to
   avoid the possibility of being on the losing side of a fencepost
   error.  2. The percentage of `extra' code generated by a compiler
   over the size of equivalent assembler code produced by
   hand-hacking; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because
   you didn't do it yourself.  This number is often used as a measure
   of the goodness of a compiler; slop below 5% is very good, and
   10% is usually acceptable.  With modern compiler technology, esp.
   on RISC machines, the compiler's slop may actually be
   *negative*; that is, humans may be unable to generate code as
   good.  This is one of the reasons assembler programming is no
   longer common.