Evolving Control Structures with Automatically Defined Macros
Lee C. Spector · 2001
Koza has previously shown that the power of a genetic programming system can often be enhanced by allowing for the simultaneous evolution of a main program and a collection of automatically defined functions (ADFs). In this paper I show how related techniques can be used to simultaneously evolve a collection of automatically defined macros (ADMs). I show how ADMs can be used to produce new control structures during the evolution of a program, and I present data showing that ADMs sometimes provide a greater benefit than do ADFs. I discuss the characteristics of problems that may benefit most from the use of ADMs, or from architectures that include both ADFs and ADMs, and I discuss directions for further research. Introduction Modern programming languages support the production of structured, modular programs through several mechanisms including subroutines, coroutines, and macros. Koza has shown that the power of a genetic programming system can often be enhanced by allowing for the ...