Abstract

We have developed a new technique for computing the argument vectors used to build specializations of first-class functions. Instead of building these specializations on completely dynamic actual parameters, our technique performs a control flow analysis of the residual program as it is constructed during specialization, and uses the results of this analysis to compute more accurate actual parameter values. As implemented in the program specializer FUSE, our technique has proven useful in improving the specialization of several realistic programs taken from the domains of interpreters and scientific computation. Also, it extends the utility of the continuation-passing-style (CPS) transformation for binding time improvement to programs with non tail-recursive residual loops. Introduction The treatment of function calls in program point specializers for first-order functional languages is fairly straightforward: since the head of the call always evaluates to a known procedure at specia...

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