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A thunk is a piece of glue machine code that adjusts some pointer (which is imagined to make a "thunk" sound) and then calls the real code.

• pmarreck 2y ago
  It's a delayed evaluation, as I understand it?
  • alexisread 2y ago
    That's the way I tend to read it. The fun bit then is applying context at eval time. Rebol allows you to use a block as a list/function/thunk, which is lazily evaluated. This changes the scoping in that you BIND a context to this thunk. It's a different take on process migration in that the context can be serialised with the thunk, or a new context applied at the process site. This is in contrast to lexically scoped lambda functions which then need to account for dynamic (free) variables somehow.
  • kazinator 2y ago
    There is a usage of thunk in the context of implementing a compilation strategy for call-by-name arguments. The usage survives into modern times, whereby lambda arguments are sometimes called thunks.