Incremental execution of transformation specifications

  • Authors:
  • Ganesh Sittampalam;Oege de Moor;Ken Friis Larsen

  • Affiliations:
  • Oxford University Computing Laboratory;Oxford University Computing Laboratory;IT University of Copenhagen

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

We aim to specify program transformations in a declarative style, and then to generate executable program transformers from such specifications. Many transformations require non-trivial program analysis to check their applicability, and it is prohibitively expensive to re-run such analyses after each transformation. It is desirable, therefore, that the analysis information is incrementally updated.We achieve this by drawing on two pieces of previous work: first, Bernhard Steffen's proposal to use model checking for certain analysis problems, and second, John Conway's theory of language factors. The first allows the neat specification of transformations, while the second opens the way for an incremental implementation. The two ideas are linked by using regular patterns instead of Steffen's modal logic: these patterns can be viewed as queries on the set of program paths.