Summary

A partial evaluator takes a program that takes arguments and specializes it into a program for which some of the arguments have become constants. Hopefully in doing so it becomes able to simplify the resulting program.

Value Proposition

Seems ridiculously powerful as a mechanism for optimization. In practice not actually used much.

TODO List:

• Read the following:
  • http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~cs701-1/LectureNotes/trunk/cs701-lec-09-03-2015/cs701-lec-09-03-2015.pdf
  • http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~cs701-1/LectureNotes/trunk/cs701-pe/pe-part2.html
  • http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~horwitz/CS704-NOTES/9.PARTIAL-EVALUATION.html
  • http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~horwitz/CS704-NOTES/PAPERS/JonesPartialEvaluation.pdf