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Specialization Scenarios: A Pragmatic Approach to Declaring Program Specialization

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Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

Abstract

Partial evaluation is a program transformation that automatically specializes a program with respect to invariants. Despite successful application in areas such as graphics, operating systems, and software engineering, partial evaluators have yet to achieve widespread use. One reason is the difficulty of adequately describing specialization opportunities. Indeed, underspecialization or overspecialization often occurs, without any feedback as to the source of the problem.

We have developed a high-level, module-based language allowing the program developer to guide the choice of both the code to specialize and the invariants to exploit during the specialization process. To ease the use of partial evaluation, the syntax of this language is similar to the declaration syntax of the target language of the partial evaluator. To provide feedback, declarations are checked during the analyses performed by partial evaluation. The language has been successfully used by a variety of users, including students having no previous experience with partial evaluation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRIA/LaBRI, ENSEIRB, 1 avenue du docteur Albert Schweitzer, 33402, Talence Cedex, France

    Anne-Françoise Le Meur & Charles Consel

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 1, i[DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Julia L. Lawall

Authors
  1. Anne-Françoise Le Meur
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  2. Julia L. Lawall
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  3. Charles Consel
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Le Meur, AF., Lawall, J.L. & Consel, C. Specialization Scenarios: A Pragmatic Approach to Declaring Program Specialization. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation 17, 47–92 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LISP.0000029448.02877.78

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LISP.0000029448.02877.78

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