specification

n 1: a detailed description of design criteria for a piece of

work [syn: {spec}]

2: a restriction that is insisted upon as a condition for an

agreement [syn: {stipulation}]

specialisation

A reduction in generality, usually for the sake of increased

efficiency. If a piece of code is specialised for certain

values of certain variables (usually function arguments), this

is known as "{partial evaluation}". In a language with

{overloading} (e.g. {Haskell}), an overloaded function might be

specialised to a non-overloaded instance at compile-time if

the types of its arguments are known.