Improving and refining programs by program manipulation

Abstract

By manipulating programs to reorganize the way they compute their results, it is possible to improve program performance in certain desirable directions. Further, using certain laws of exchange, it is possible to transform concise, abstract, high-level programs into efficient, concrete , underlying representations. This paper explores the notion of using source-to-source transformations interactively as a basis for an approach to program improvement and refinement. Examples of program manipulation are presented that convey both the flavor of the approach and its requirements.