function arguments is started before their value is required.
passed evaluated. The opposite of eager evaluation is
call-by-need where evaluation of an argument is only started
when it is required.
to eager evaluation but is applied mostly to parallel
architectures whereas eager evaluation is used of both
sequential and parallel evaluators.
Eager evaluation does not specify exactly when argument
evaluation takes place - it might be done fully speculatively
(all
redexes in the program reduced in parallel) or may be
done by the caller just before the function is entered.
The term "eager evaluation" was invented by Carl Hewitt and
Incremental Garbage Collection of Processes", Sigplan Notices,
Aug 1977.
named after their "eager beaver" evaluator.
(1994-12-22)