What is a 'thunk'?

Question

I\'ve seen it used in programming (specifically in the C++ domain) and have no idea what it is. Presumably it is a design pattern, but I could be wrong. Can anyone give a go

Answer 1

The word thunk has at least three related meanings in computer science. A "thunk" may be:

• a piece of code to perform a delayed computation (similar to a closure)
• a feature of some virtual function table implementations (similar to a wrapper function)
• a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another, usually for compatibility reasons

I have usually seen it used in the third context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk