and the application done (first applied to second). If the result of the application is a value, it is pushed onto the stack. If the application is of an abstraction to a value, however, it will result in a lambda calculus expression that may itself be an application (rather than a value), and so cannot be pushed onto the stack. In this case, the current contents of S, E, and C are pushed onto the dump D (which is a stack of these triples), S is reinitialised to empty, and C is reinitialised to the application result with E containing the environment for the free variables of this expression, augmented with the binding that resulted from the application. Evaluation then proceeds as above. Completed evaluation is indicated by C being empty, in which case the result will be on the stack S. The last saved evaluation state on D is then popped, and the result of the completed evaluation is pushed onto the stack contents restored from D. Evaluation of the restored state then continues as above. If C and D are both empty, overall evaluation has completed with the result on the stack S. Registers and memory The SECD machine is stack-based. Functions take their arguments from the stack. The arguments to built-in instructions are encoded immediately after them in the instruction stream. Like all internal data-structures, the stack is a list, with the S register pointing at the list's head or beginning. Due to the list structure, the stack need not be a continuous block of memory, so stack space is available as long as there is a single free memory cell. Even when all cells have been used, garbage collection may yield additional free memory. Obviously, specific implementations of the SECD structure can implement the stack as a canonical stack structure, thus improving the overall efficiency of the virtual machine, provided that a strict bound be put on the dimension of the stack. The C register points at the head of the code or instruction list that will be evaluated. Once the instruction there has been executed, the C is pointed at the next instruction in the list—it is similar to an instruction pointer (or program counter) in conventional machines, except that subsequent instructions are always specified during execution and are not by default contained in subsequent memory locations, as is the case with the conventional machines.