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.