MetaWSL and meta-transformations in the FermaT transformation system

Abstract

A program transformation is an operation which can be applied to any program (satisfying the transformations applicability conditions) and returns a semantically equivalent program. In the FermaT transformation system program transformations are carried out in a wide spectrum language, called WSL, and the transformations themselves are written in an extension of WSL called MetaWSL which was specifically designed to be a domain-specific language for writing program transformations. As a result, FermaT is capable of transforming its own source code via meta-transformations. This paper introduces MetaWSL and describes some applications of meta-transformations in the FermaT system.