Partial Evaluation of Rewriting Logic Theories

Abstract

Partial evaluation is a powerful and general program optimization technique that preserves program semantics and has many successful applications. Optimization is achieved by specializing programs w.r.t. a part of their input data so that, when the residual or specialized program is executed on the remaining input data, it produces the same outcome than the original program with all of its input data. Existing PE schemes do not apply to expressive rule-based languages like Maude, CafeOBJ, OBJ, ASF+SDF, and ELAN, which support: 1) rich type structures with sorts, subsorts, and overloading; and 2) equational rewriting modulo various combinations of axioms such as associativity, commutativity, and identity. This thesis develops the foundations