restriction

Restrictions are also bad when they relate to code and coding environments. No programmer likes to be restricted by arbitrary limits on memory or inconsistent data handling. The worst of these is Visual Basic.

The act of cleaving DNA or RNA with a restriction enzyme.

restriction n.

A bug or design error that limits a program's capabilities, and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work up enough nerve to describe it as a feature. Often used (esp. by marketroid types) to make it sound as though some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints of a nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these claims are almost invariably false).

Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever choosing a quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should make it either a power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you impose a limit of 107 items in a list, everyone will know it is a random number -- on the other hand, a limit of 15 or 16 suggests some deep reason (involving 0- or 1-based indexing in binary) and you will get less flamage for it. Limits which are round numbers in base 10 are always especially suspect.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

Re*stric"tion (?), n. [F. restriction, L. restrictio.]

1.

The act of restricting, or state of being restricted; confinement within limits or bounds.

This is to have the same restriction with all other recreations,that it be made a divertisement. Giv. of Tonque.

2.

That which restricts; limitation; restraint; as, restrictions on trade.

© Webster 1913.