Stack Environment Control Dump Machine

What Does Stack Environment Control Dump Machine Mean?

A Stack Environment Control Dump machine (SECD machine) is an abstract machine made for the implementation of functional programming. A SECD machine contains registers "stack control and dump" and what experts refer to as an associative array in terms of environment, to help with the compiling of functional programming languages.

Techopedia Explains Stack Environment Control Dump Machine

The idea of the SECD machine is attributed to Peter Landon in his work “The Mechanical Evaluation of Expressions” in 1964. More recently, technologies such as a certain offshoot of Lisp utilize this sort of abstract machine design. As a stack-based technology, the SECD machine involves functions taking an argument from the stack, with specific rules and protocols to facilitate this type of computing.

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Margaret Rouse

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Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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