In computer science, an evaluation strategy is a set of (usually deterministic) rules for evaluating expressions in a programming language. Emphasis is typically placed on functions or operators: an evaluation strategy defines when and in what order the arguments to a function are evaluated, when they are substituted into the function, and what form that substitution takes. The lambda calculus, a formal system for the study of functions, has often been used to model evaluation strategies, where they are usually called reduction strategies. Evaluation strategies divide into two basic groups, strict and non-strict, based on how arguments to a function are handled. A language may combine several evaluation strategies; for example, C++ combines call-by-value with call-by-reference. Most languages that are predominantly strict use some form of non-strict evaluation for boolean expressions and if-statements.
Read more about Evaluation Strategy: Strict Evaluation, Non-strict Evaluation
Famous quotes containing the words evaluation and/or strategy:
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)