Continuation (nonfiction)

In computer science and computer programming, a continuation is an abstract representation of the control state of a computer program. A continuation implements (reifies) the program control state, i.e. the continuation is a data structure that represents the computational process at a given point in the process's execution; the created data structure can be accessed by the programming language, instead of being hidden in the runtime environment. Continuations are useful for encoding other control mechanisms in programming languages such as exceptions, generators, coroutines, and so on.

The "current continuation" or "continuation of the computation step" is the continuation that, from the perspective of running code, would be derived from the current point in a program's execution. The term continuations can also be used to refer to first-class continuations, which are constructs that give a programming language the ability to save the execution state at any point and return to that point at a later point in the program, possibly multiple times.

• Abstraction (computer science) (nonfiction) - In software engineering and computer science, abstraction is:
  • the process of removing physical, spatial, or temporal details or attributes in the study of objects or systems in order to focus attention on details of higher importance, it is also very similar in nature to the process of generalization;
  • the creation of abstract concept-objects which are created by mirroring common features or attributes from various non-abstract objects or systems of study — the result of the process of abstraction.
• Computer program (nonfiction) - a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer.
• Computer programming (nonfiction)
• Computer science (nonfiction)
• Control flow (nonfiction) - the order in which individual statements, instructions or function calls of an imperative program are executed or evaluated. The emphasis on explicit control flow distinguishes an imperative programming language from a declarative programming language. Within an imperative programming language, a control flow statement is a statement, the execution of which results in a choice being made as to which of two or more paths to follow. For non-strict functional languages, functions and language constructs exist to achieve the same result, but they are usually not termed control flow statements.
• Exception handling (nonfiction) - the process of responding to the occurrence, during computation, of exceptions – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – often disrupting the normal flow of program execution. It is provided by specialized programming language constructs, computer hardware mechanisms like interrupts or operating system IPC facilities like signals. In general, an exception breaks the normal flow of execution and executes a pre-registered exception handler. The details of how this is done depends on whether it is a hardware or software exception and how the software exception is implemented. Some exceptions, especially hardware ones, may be handled so gracefully that execution can resume where it was interrupted. Alternative approaches to exception handling in software are error checking, which maintains normal program flow with later explicit checks for contingencies reported using special return values or some auxiliary global variable such as C's errno or floating point status flags; or input validation to preemptively filter exceptional cases.
• Reification (computer science) (nonfiction) - the process by which an abstract idea about a computer program is turned into an explicit data model or other object created in a programming language. A computable/addressable object—a resource—is created in a system as a proxy for a non computable/addressable object. By means of reification, something that was previously implicit, unexpressed, and possibly inexpressible is explicitly formulated and made available to conceptual (logical or computational) manipulation. Informally, reification is often referred to as "making something a first-class citizen" within the scope of a particular system. Some aspect of a system can be reified at language design time, which is related to reflection in programming languages. It can be applied as a stepwise refinement at system design time. Reification is one of the most frequently used techniques of conceptual analysis and knowledge representation.
• Runtime system (nonfiction) - also called run-time system, runtime environment or run-time environment, primarily implements portions of an execution model. This is not to be confused with the runtime lifecycle phase of a program, during which the runtime system is in operation. Most languages have some form of runtime system that provides an environment in which programs run. This environment may address a number of issues including the layout of application memory, how the program accesses variables, mechanisms for passing parameters between procedures, interfacing with the operating system, and otherwise. The compiler makes assumptions depending on the specific runtime system to generate correct code. Typically the runtime system will have some responsibility for setting up and managing the stack and heap, and may include features such as garbage collection, threads or other dynamic features built into the language.

• Continuation @ Wikipedia