Program Normalization
Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki
A normalization reduces a program to a program in a sub-language, with the purpose of decreasing its syntactic complexity. Desugaring is a kind of normalization in which some of the constructs (syntactic sugar) of a language are eliminated by translating them into more fundamental contructs. For example, the Haskell language definition describes for many constructs how they can be desugared to a kernel language. Other examples are module flattening and the definition of EBNF constructs in pure BNF as is done for example in the SDFII normalizer . Simplification is a more general kind of normalization in which a program is reduced to a normal (standard) form, without necessarily removing simplified constructs. For example, consider canonicalization of intermediate representation and algebraic simplification of expressions. Note that normal form does not necessarily correspond to being a normal form with respect to a set of rewrite rules.
CategoryTransformation | -- EelcoVisser - 03 May 2001