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Well-Behaved

/wel-bi-ˈhāvəd/

adj. 1. [primarily MS-DOS]

Said of software conforming to system interface guidelines and standards. Well-behaved software uses the operating system to do chores such as keyboard input, allocating memory and drawing graphics.

Oppose ill-behaved.

2. Software that does its job quietly and without counterintuitive effects. Esp. said of software having an interface spec sufficiently simple and well-defined that it can be used as a tool by other software.

See cat.