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A system which automatically improves programs

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Summary

Here we give methods of mechanically converting programs that are easy to understand into more efficient ones, converting recursion equations using high level operations into lower level flowchart programs.

The main transformations involved are (i) recursion removal (ii) eliminating common subexpressions and combining loops (iii) replacing procedure calls by their bodies (iv) introducing assignments which overwrite list cells no longer in use (compiletime garbage collection).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Artificial Intelligence, Univ. of Edinburgh, Hope Park Square Meadow Lane, EH8 9NW, Edinburgh, UK

    J. Darlington & R. M. Burstall

Authors
  1. J. Darlington
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  2. R. M. Burstall
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Additional information

The operations we use are based on the POP-2 language, Burstall, Collins and Popplestone [1]. The main features to note are that hd is the LISP car, tl the LISP cdr and concat joins two lists (the LISP append).

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Darlington, J., Burstall, R.M. A system which automatically improves programs. Acta Informatica 6, 41–60 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263742

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