[derleth]

> Performing operations on data that are known at the time of supercompilation.

Isn't this known as partial application? For example, I have a function of five arguments, and I know three of them, partial application optimizes the function based on the three knowns while retaining full generality for the two unknowns.

[thesz]

This is just one of transformations performed by supercompilation.

I recently discovered distillation [1], which could transform quadratic and even more complex programs into linear ones (ie, perform non-linear complexity reduction).

So there's more in supercompilation that partial evaluation.

[1]: http://meta2010.pereslavl.ru/accepted-papers/paper-info-2.ht...

[dkersten]

Distillation is cool! Thanks for the link.

Geoff Hamilton lectured my classes in computability, parsing, automata and compilers. He certainly knows his stuff.