Mixed computation and compilation: New approaches to old problems

AbstractMixed computations and partial evaluation are powerful programming tools which any be used for different program manipulations such as macroprocessing, compilation, debugging, installation and solution. The most interesting and most significant advances in the area of mixed computation and partial evaluation are connected with automatic compiler generation and were successful recently in Denmark, Japan, USSR and some other places. This paper presents a survey of different approaches to mixed computation and their comparison. It is shown that a non-trivial partial evaluators needs to use some developed mechanisms of polyvariancy and abstract interpretation. The importance and necessary of a user control over mixed computation is discussed. Some other kinds of program manipulations which can be realised via mixed computation are also considered. These are metaprogramming, incremental computation and sequential decomposition