applicative order reduction

1 definition found

applicative order reduction - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  applicative order reduction
  
     <programming> An evaluation strategy under which an
     expression is evaluated by repeatedly evaluating its leftmost
     innermost redex.  This means that a function's arguments are
     evaluated before the function is applied.  This method will
     not terminate if a function is given a non-terminating
     expression as an argument even if the function is not strict
     in that argument.  Also known as call-by-value since the
     values of arguments are passed rather than their names.  This
     is the evaluation strategy used by ML, Scheme, Hope and
     most procedural languages such as C and Pascal.
  
     See also normal order reduction, parallel reduction.
  
     (1995-01-25)