Program transformation with metasystem transitions

Abstract

A new program transformation method is presented. It is a further refinement of supercompilation where the supercompiler is not applied directly to the function to be transformed, but to a metafunction, namely an interpreter which computes this function using its definition and an abstract (i.e. including variables) input. It is shown that with this method such tranfor-mations become possible which the direct application of the supercompiler cannot perform. Examples include the merging of iterative loops, function inversion, and transformation of deterministic into non-deterministic algorithms, and vice-versa. © 1993, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.