Lazy Evaluation

Abstract

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• Lazy evaluation refers to delaying the computation of an Expression until its value is actually needed, and avoid repeated computation with the help of Memoization

Lazy Evaluation with Java

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• The code example below is around showSystemInfo() which prints out the system information like CPU, RAM & SSD if the batteryLevel is >=20. Otherwise, it should print out anything to console

Without lazy evaluation

• We have to retrieve the system information even when the batteryLevel is <20, this is wasted computation because we can’t print out the system information when the batteryLevel<20!

With lazy evaluation

• With the help of Functional Interface and Java Lambda, we are able to treat the Function that handles system information retrieval as First-class Citizen Function, passing them into the showSystemInfo which decides if it needs to retrieve the system information depends on the batteryLevel. We only retrieve the system information when we have enough battery

Important

We can also make use of Memoization if the result of computation remains the same all the time.