Lambda calculusLambda calculus (also written as λ-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine. It was introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of his research into the foundations of mathematics. Lambda calculus consists of constructing lambda terms and performing reduction operations on them.
Dynamic program analysisDynamic program analysis is analysis of computer software that involves executing the program in question (as opposed to static program analysis, which does not). Dynamic program analysis includes familiar techniques from software engineering such as unit testing, debugging, and measuring code coverage, but also includes lesser-known techniques like program slicing and invariant inference. Dynamic program analysis is widely applied in security in the form of runtime memory error detection, fuzzing, dynamic symbolic execution, and taint tracking.
C dynamic memory allocationC dynamic memory allocation refers to performing manual memory management for dynamic memory allocation in the C programming language via a group of functions in the C standard library, namely , , , and . The C++ programming language includes these functions; however, the operators and provide similar functionality and are recommended by that language's authors. Still, there are several situations in which using new/delete is not applicable, such as garbage collection code or performance-sensitive code, and a combination of malloc and placement new may be required instead of the higher-level new operator.
Class (computer programming)In object-oriented programming, a class is an extensible program-code-template for creating objects, providing initial values for state (member variables) and implementations of behavior (member functions or methods). In many languages, the class name is used as the name for the class (the template itself), the name for the default constructor of the class (a subroutine that creates objects), and as the type of objects generated by instantiating the class; these distinct concepts are easily conflated.
Type classIn computer science, a type class is a type system construct that supports ad hoc polymorphism. This is achieved by adding constraints to type variables in parametrically polymorphic types. Such a constraint typically involves a type class T and a type variable a, and means that a can only be instantiated to a type whose members support the overloaded operations associated with T.
Object lifetimeIn object-oriented programming (OOP), the object lifetime (or life cycle) of an object is the time between an object's creation and its destruction. Rules for object lifetime vary significantly between languages, in some cases between implementations of a given language, and lifetime of a particular object may vary from one run of the program to another. In some cases, object lifetime coincides with variable lifetime of a variable with that object as value (both for static variables and automatic variables), but in general, object lifetime is not tied to the lifetime of any one variable.
Binary relationIn mathematics, a binary relation associates elements of one set, called the domain, with elements of another set, called the codomain. A binary relation over sets X and Y is a new set of ordered pairs (x, y) consisting of elements x in X and y in Y. It is a generalization of the more widely understood idea of a unary function. It encodes the common concept of relation: an element x is related to an element y, if and only if the pair (x, y) belongs to the set of ordered pairs that defines the binary relation.
Converse relationIn mathematics, the converse relation, or transpose, of a binary relation is the relation that occurs when the order of the elements is switched in the relation. For example, the converse of the relation 'child of' is the relation 'parent of'. In formal terms, if and are sets and is a relation from to then is the relation defined so that if and only if In set-builder notation, The notation is analogous with that for an inverse function. Although many functions do not have an inverse, every relation does have a unique converse.
Program analysisIn computer science, program analysis is the process of automatically analyzing the behavior of computer programs regarding a property such as correctness, robustness, safety and liveness. Program analysis focuses on two major areas: program optimization and program correctness. The first focuses on improving the program’s performance while reducing the resource usage while the latter focuses on ensuring that the program does what it is supposed to do.
Manual memory managementIn computer science, manual memory management refers to the usage of manual instructions by the programmer to identify and deallocate unused objects, or garbage. Up until the mid-1990s, the majority of programming languages used in industry supported manual memory management, though garbage collection has existed since 1959, when it was introduced with Lisp. Today, however, languages with garbage collection such as Java are increasingly popular and the languages Objective-C and Swift provide similar functionality through Automatic Reference Counting.
Optimizing compilerIn computing, an optimizing compiler is a compiler that tries to minimize or maximize some attributes of an executable computer program. Common requirements are to minimize a program's execution time, memory footprint, storage size, and power consumption (the last three being popular for portable computers). Compiler optimization is generally implemented using a sequence of optimizing transformations, algorithms which take a program and transform it to produce a semantically equivalent output program that uses fewer resources or executes faster.
Function (mathematics)In mathematics, a function from a set X to a set Y assigns to each element of X exactly one element of Y. The set X is called the domain of the function and the set Y is called the codomain of the function. Functions were originally the idealization of how a varying quantity depends on another quantity. For example, the position of a planet is a function of time. Historically, the concept was elaborated with the infinitesimal calculus at the end of the 17th century, and, until the 19th century, the functions that were considered were differentiable (that is, they had a high degree of regularity).