Improving and refining programs by program manipulation

Standish, Thomas A.; Kibler, Dennis; Neighbors, James M.

doi:10.1145/800191.805652

Cited by 30 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The pure program-transf ormation approach has been advocated by Burstall and Darlington [1977], Knuth [1974], Standish et al (1976), and others. Gerhart [1975) introduces a system of correctness-preserving transformations.…”

Section: Implications For Programming Methodology 75mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesis: Dreams → Programs

Manna

Waldinger

1979

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

107

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Deductive techniques are presented for deriving programs systematically from given specifications. The specifications express the purpose of the desired program without giving any hint of the algorithm to be employed. The basic approach Is to transform the specifications repeatedly according to certain rules, until a satisfact ory program is produced. The rules are guided by a number of strategic controls. These techniques have been incorporated in a running program-synthesis system, called DEDALUS.Many of the transformation rules represent knowledge about the program's subject domain (e.g., numbers, lists, sets); some represent the meaning of the constructs of the specification language and the target programming language; and a few rules represent basic programming principles. Two of these principles, the conditional-formation rule and the recursion-formation rule , account for the introduction of conditional expressions and of recursive calls Into the synthesized program. The termination of the program is ensured as new recursive calls are formed .Two extensions of the recursion-formation rule are discussed: a ~r oceduro-formatIon rule, which admits the introduction of auxilliary subroutines in the course of the synthesis process . and a generali zation rule, which causes the specifications to be altered to represent a more general problem that is nevertheless easier to solve. S pecial techniques are Introduced for the formation of programs with side effects.The techniques of this paper are illustrated with a sequence of ex amples of Increasing complexity; programs are constructed for list processing, numerical cakulatlon, and array computation.The methods of program synthesis can be applied to various aspects of programming methodology --program transformation, data abstraction, program modification, and structured programming.The DEDA LUS system accepts specifications expressed in a high-level language, including set notation, logical quantification, and a rich vocabulary drawn from a var iety of subject domains. The system attempts to transform the specifications into a recursive, LISP-like target program. Over one hundred rules have been implemented, each expressed as a small program in the ~L • Extens Ions of Recursion Format ion 08

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Section: Implications For Programming Methodology 75mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesis: Dreams → Programs

Manna

Waldinger

1979

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

107

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“…Schwartz (1979) and Blikle (1979) propose to express their methods by transformations of specifications mixed with program components, and they study the logical effects of these specific transformations. In other works on program transformation systems, such as Standish et al (1976), Bauer et al (1979), and Arsac (1979), the initial effort was put on the building of basic and effective transformation rules, whereas growing attention is now paid to their logical interpendence and structure. Metalevels have been introduced in the context of logical proof systems : see the strategies and tactics in Gordon, Milner et al (]978), the metatheories in Weyrhauch (1978), and the metafunctions in Boyer and Moore (1979).…”

Section: Discussion ~Nd Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for composing and specifying program design decisions

Sintzoff

1980

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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“…Program source to source transformation and supporting tools were very popular in the late 70's and early 80's ( [32,41], to cite a few). The research subject went out of fashion probably because program transformation systems needed too large catalogues of transformation rules that were hard to master in batch mode by programmers and transformation enabling conditions ensuring the correctness/incorrectness of program behavior preservation/refinement were hard to prove (either manually or automatically) [1].…”

Section: Hsincementioning

confidence: 99%