Advanced Techniques for Logic Program Specialisation
Michaël Leuschel · Lirias · 1997
Program specialisation, also called partial evaluation or partial deduction, is an automatic technique for program optimisation. The central idea is to specialise a given source program for a particular application domain. Program specialisation encompasses traditional compiler optimisation techniques, but uses more aggressive transformations, yielding both much greater speedups and more difficulty in controlling the transformation process. Because of their clear (and often simple) semantical foundations, declarative languages offer significant advantages for the design of semantics based program analysers, transformers and optimisers. This thesis exploits these advantages in the context of logic programming and develops advanced techniques for program specialisation, striving to produce tangible practical benefits within the larger objective of turning declarative languages and program specialisation into valuable tools for constructing reliable, maintainable