research-article

Automating string processing in spreadsheets using input-output examples

Author:

Sumit GulwaniAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 317 - 330

https://doi.org/10.1145/1926385.1926423

Published: 26 January 2011 Publication History

Abstract

We describe the design of a string programming/expression language that supports restricted forms of regular expressions, conditionals and loops. The language is expressive enough to represent a wide variety of string manipulation tasks that end-users struggle with. We describe an algorithm based on several novel concepts for synthesizing a desired program in this language from input-output examples. The synthesis algorithm is very efficient taking a fraction of a second for various benchmark examples. The synthesis algorithm is interactive and has several desirable features: it can rank multiple solutions and has fast convergence, it can detect noise in the user input, and it supports an active interaction model wherein the user is prompted to provide outputs on inputs that may have multiple computational interpretations.

The algorithm has been implemented as an interactive add-in for Microsoft Excel spreadsheet system. The prototype tool has met the golden test - it has synthesized part of itself, and has been used to solve problems beyond author's imagination.

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cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 2011

652 pages

ISBN:9781450304900

DOI:10.1145/1926385

General Chair:
Thomas Ball
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Program Chair:
Mooly Sagiv
Tel Aviv University, Israel

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 46, Issue 1
POPL '11
January 2011
624 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1925844
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 26 January 2011

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POPL '11: The 38th Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages

January 26 - 28, 2011

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Cited By

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1609/aaai.v38i8.28641
Xu CChen SWu JCheung STerragni VZhu HCao JFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)MR-Adopt: Automatic Deduction of Input Transformation Function for Metamorphic TestingProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3696020(557-569)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
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Xia JLiu JBrown NChen YFeng YFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)Refinement Types for VisualizationProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695550(1871-1881)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
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Cao JChen ZWu JCheung SXu CFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)JavaBench: A Benchmark of Object-Oriented Code Generation for Evaluating Large Language ModelsProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695470(870-882)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
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Dargahi Nobari ARafiei D(2024)DTT: An Example-Driven Tabular Transformer for Joinability by Leveraging Large Language ModelsProceedings of the ACM on Management of Data10.1145/36392792:1(1-24)Online publication date: 26-Mar-2024
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