lookahead

Etymology
.

Noun

 * 1)  The analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.
 * Our computer chess program uses lookahead to avoid difficult endgames.
 * 1)  The analysis of the subsequent characters before the regular expression is matched.

Hyponyms

 * negative lookahead, positive lookahead, carry-lookahead