A narrow opening, as a keyway in a machine or the slit for a coin in a vending machine. Also, a position in a series, sequence, or schedule. The program received a new time slot. Compare with rim (def 10).

In gambling, a space in which a player inserts coins or, in “ticket-in, ticket-out” machines, paper tickets with barcodes to activate the machine and pay out winnings based on the paytable. The symbols and theme vary by game, but classics include fruit, bells, and stylized lucky sevens. Many slot games are part of larger jackpot networks, allowing players from different casinos to contribute to the same pool and increase their odds of winning the top prize.

The amount that a machine pays out on each spin is determined by a random number generator, which ensures that each outcome is truly independent of previous ones. This makes it impossible to develop strategies that depend on patterns in past results. For example, some people claim that slots pay better at night because more people play them then, but this is untrue from a statistical standpoint.

In software programming, a slot is an element of the AST that contains information about the type of data it will contain. It is possible to map values to a slot using regular expressions, which allow you to match whole words or phrases rather than individual characters.