Editing Continuation (section)

{{Short description|Representation of the control state of a computer program}}
{{Other uses}}
{{More citations needed|date=July 2010}}
In [[computer science]], a '''continuation''' is an [[Abstraction (computer science)|abstract representation]] of the [[Control flow|control state]] of a [[computer program]]. A continuation implements ([[Reification (computer science)|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 [[Run-time system|runtime environment]]. Continuations are useful for encoding other control mechanisms in programming languages such as [[Exception handling|exception]]s, [[Generator (computer science)|generators]], [[coroutine]]s, 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.