lookahead
nounEtymology Deverbal from look ahead.
1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences, Software compilation The analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.
- Our computer chess program uses lookahead to avoid difficult endgames.
2
The analysis of the subsequent characters before the regular expression is matched.
Regular expressions
- Derived terms
- lookahead time, nonlookahead
- Related terms
- lookaside, lookbehind, runahead
- Hypernyms
- lookaround