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The Translation Power of the Futamura Projections

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Book cover Perspectives of System Informatics (PSI 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2890))

Abstract

Despite practical successes with the Futamura projections, it has been an open question whether target programs produced by specializing interpreters can always be as efficient as those produced by a translator. We show that, given a Jones-optimal program specializer with static expression reduction, there exists for every translator an interpreter which, when specialized, can produce target programs that are at least as fast as those produced by the translator. This is not the case if the specializer is not Jones-optimal. We also examine Ershov’s generating extensions, give a parameterized notion of Jones optimality, and show that there is a class of specializers that can always produce residual programs that match the size and time complexity of programs generated by an arbitrary generating extension. This is the class of generation universal specializers. We study these questions on an abstract level, independently of any particular specialization method.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. PRESTO, JST & Institute for Software Production Technology, Waseda University, School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan

    Robert Glück

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  1. Robert Glück
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität München, Germany

    Manfred Broy

  2. A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia

    Alexandre V. Zamulin

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Glück, R. (2004). The Translation Power of the Futamura Projections. In: Broy, M., Zamulin, A.V. (eds) Perspectives of System Informatics. PSI 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2890. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39866-0_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39866-0_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20813-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39866-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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