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Reasoning about hierarchies of online program specialization systems

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Partial Evaluation

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1110))

Abstract

We present the language S-Graph-n — the core of a multilevel metaprogramming environment for exploring foundational issues of self-applicable online program specialization.

We illustrate how special-purpose S-Graph-n primitives can be used to obtain an efficient and conceptually simple encoding of programs as data objects. The key feature of the encoding scheme is the use of numerical indices which indicate the number of times that a program piece has been encoded.

Evaluation of S-Graph-n is formalized via an operational semantics. This semantics is used to justify the fundamental operations on metavariables — special-purpose tags for tracking unknown values in self-applicable online specialization systems. We show how metavariables can be used to construct biased generating extensions without relying on a separate binding-time analysis phase.

This work has been supported by the Danish Research Academy and by the DART project (Design, Analysis and Reasoning about Tools) of the Danish Research Councils.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DIKU, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 1, DK-2100, Copenhagen ø, Denmark

    John Hatcliff & Robert Glück

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  1. John Hatcliff
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  2. Robert Glück
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Olivier Danvy Robert Glück Peter Thiemann

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Hatcliff, J., Glück, R. (1996). Reasoning about hierarchies of online program specialization systems. In: Danvy, O., Glück, R., Thiemann, P. (eds) Partial Evaluation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1110. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61580-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61580-6_9

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61580-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70589-5

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