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thunk

intj, verb, noun — 7 senses

thunk

intj

/θʌŋk/

Etymology Onomatopoeic.

1

Representing the dull sound of the impact of a heavy object striking another and coming to an immediate standstill, with neither object being broken by the impact.

thunk

verb

Etymology Onomatopoeic.

1

To strike against something, without breakage, making a "thunk" sound.

  • I was thunked on the head by his stick.

thunk

noun

Etymology Said by the inventors to be from the irregular jocular past tense of think (see Etymology 1), being coined when they realised that the type of an argument in ALGOL 60 could be predetermined at compile time (with a little compile-time “thought”).

1

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A delayed computation.

Functional programming

  • Not surprisingly, a thunk is more expensive to store than a single number[…].2009, Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen, Donald Bruce Stewart, Real World Haskell, O'Reilly, page 97:
2

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences In the Scheme programming language, a function or procedure taking no arguments.

3

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences A specialized subroutine that one software module uses to execute code in another module.

  • If the provider of these DLLs has not updated the code to a 32-bit environment, you will have to switch to a new 32-bit library or write thunks between your 32-bit code and the 16-bit DLL.1995 October 10, PC Mag, volume 14, number 17, page 326:
Related terms
thunking

thunk

verb

Etymology Said by the inventors to be from the irregular jocular past tense of think (see Etymology 1), being coined when they realised that the type of an argument in ALGOL 60 could be predetermined at compile time (with a little compile-time “thought”).

1

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences To delay (a computation).

Functional programming

  • Not surprisingly, a thunk is more expensive to store than a single number, and the more complex the thunked expression, the more space it needs. For something cheap such as arithmetic, thunking an expression is more computationally expensive than calculating it immediately.2009, Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen, Donald Bruce Stewart, Real World Haskell, O'Reilly, page 97:
2

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences To execute (code) by means of a thunk.

  • This efficiency is offset by the fact that some of the calls made by Win32 apps must now be thunked down to 16 bits, something that isn't necessary in Windows NT and OS/2.1995 May 16, Andrew Schulman, “DOS is Dead? Look Again”, in PC Mag, volume 14, number 9, page 150:
Derived terms
thunker

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.