Skip to main content
Software Engineering

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

8
  • I'm not sure, but should "closure" be "thunk"? Hmm, maybe not; just looked at the wikipedia page: "a thunk is a parameterless closure". Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 16:44
  • When you say "call by name" are you referring to globally? Alternatively to global call-by-name is just implementing a closure type, then the if function just takes 3 closures and evaluates two (condition and then or else), but not everything need be recognized as a closure such as full call-by-name semantics Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 16:46
  • @Matt: The term "thunk" can mean several other things in the context of programming, and "parameterless closure" is not the first one I think of when I hear it. "Closure" is a lot more unambiguous. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 16:46
  • 1
    @JimmyHoffa: When I say "call by name", I'm referring to a specific style of setting up a function argument, which should be optional. Much like many existing languages will allow you to choose to pass a parameter by-value or by-reference, for this scenario you need the choice to pass by-name. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 16:50
  • While your suggestion about "call by name" semantics shown me some interesting points, it is a bit overkill for my evaluator that is not a complete compiler, as my function calls are single-line (think about MS-excel formulas). I am thinking I could add a step after the queuing of tokens by doing a pseudo-evaluation of the stack to deduce the calling tree. It should be easier to know from the tree the branches to discard. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 17:38