The PSI Program Model Builder - synthesis of very high-level programs

Abstract

A system called the Program Model Builder (PMB) is being designed and implemented to perform the basic operations required to synthesize and modify programs. PMB plays a central role as one of the expert modules of the PSI (&psgr;) program synthesis system. PMB builds a complete and consistent program model from small chunks of program specification received from other (&psgr;) experts. PMB must deal with the fact that these program fragments often omit details and may be incomplete, ambiguous, inconsistent, nonspecific, and arbitrarily ordered. The initial version of PMB has successfully synthesized a few program models from fragments. This work includes the evolution of a very high-level program modelling language, the identification and codification of useful very high-level programming knowledge including equivalence transformations, and the implementation of a rule-based problem solving system embodying this knowledge.