Specification Of Rewriting Strategies

Stratego -- Strategies for Program Transformation

by BasLuttik and EelcoVisser In AlexSellink^? (editor) Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Algebraic Specifications (ASF+SDF'97). Electronic Workshops in Computing, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, November 1997.

Abstract

User-definable strategies for the application of rewrite rules provide a means to construct transformation systems that apply rewrite rules in a controlled way. This paper describes a strategy language and its interpretation. The language is used to control the rewriting of terms using labeled rewrite rules. Rule labels are atomic strategies. Compound strategies are formed by means of sequential composition, non-deterministic choice, sequential choice, fixed point recursion, and a primitive for expressing term traversal. The traversal primitive called `push-down' applies a strategy to all arguments of the outermost function symbol of a term. Several complex term traversal strategies such as bottom-up and top-down application and (parallel) innermost and (parallel) outermost reduction can be defined in terms of this primitive. The paper contains two case studies of the application of strategies.

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