Re: thunk's

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#875

From: Peter Wentworth
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1991 09:16

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In <1151@creatures.cs.vt.edu> lavinus@csgrad.cs.vt.edu writes:
>I have a question that has been nagging me for quite some time: why do we
>call closures "thunk"s?  I mean, where did that word come from?  The only
>two theories I've heard, neither with *any* supporting evidence, are that
>it is an anagram for Knuth, and that perhaps it is a facetious past tense
>of "think".  Anyone know??

In Gries' book on compiler construction he says its because of the 
noise that the base pointer makes as you drop it back to the previous
context. 'Thunk!' (It was a long time ago when we used the book ... hope I've
remembered it right ...!)
Pete
--
EP Wentworth - Dept. of Computer Science - Rhodes University - Grahamstown.
cspw@alpha.ru.ac.za

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From: cspw@alpha.cs.ru.ac.za (Peter Wentworth)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: Re: thunk's
Message-ID: <cspw.672398164@alpha>
Date: 23 Apr 91 09:16:04 GMT
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