Abstract

In wanting to improve program speed one idea is to generalize the concept of executing a program in a context to the concept of executing a program in a partial context. The result of such a execution is a new program that when executed in a context matching the partial context will behave as the original program would. The new program will run faster since as much execution that was possible with respect to the partial context has been done and the result of it built into the new program. We will call such a execution for partial execution. Partial execution may be done for any programming paradigm. When it is done for functional languages we call it partial evaluation. The thesis now is that a certain method of partial execution is advantageous. To support the thesis the method is precisely stated for call-by-name functional languages along with arguments of its appropriateness. Then measurements and examples from a successful implementation of the method gives further support. Final...

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