onespecified

Onespecified is a placeholder term commonly used in technical documentation and software libraries to denote a value that must be supplied by the user at runtime or during configuration. The term has no standardized definition beyond its function as an unspecified but required parameter. It is frequently encountered in the signatures of functions that accept arbitrary inputs, in command‑line interfaces that require the user to specify arguments, and in configuration files where the value is left blank for customization.

The origin of the term is informal, evolving from the programming idiom “one‑specified” in language specifications that lack a built‑in default. In many languages, the word “unspecified” is replaced by “onespecified” in example code to clarify that the developer must provide the actual value. Unlike generic placeholders such as “int” or “string”, the term “onespecified” signals that the placeholder cannot be omitted and that the absence of a user value constitutes an error.

In practice, documentation writers often recommend replacing the placeholder with a descriptive variable name, or specifying a default value in the example, to improve clarity. Nonetheless, the term remains widely used in older codebases and legacy documentation.