A Language and Preprocessor for User-Controlled Generation of Synthetic Programs
We describe Genesis, a language for the generation of synthetic programs. The language allows users to annotate a template program to customize its code using statistical distributions and to generate program instances based on those distributions. This effectively allows users to generate programs...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Hindawi Limited
2017-01-01
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| Series: | Scientific Programming |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/1046161 |
| Summary: | We describe Genesis, a language for the generation of synthetic programs. The language allows users to annotate a template program to customize its code using statistical distributions and to generate program instances based on those distributions. This effectively allows users to generate programs whose characteristics vary in a statistically controlled fashion, thus improving upon existing program generators and alleviating the difficulties associated with ad hoc methods of program generation. We describe the language constructs, a prototype preprocessor for the language, and five case studies that show the ability of Genesis to express a range of programs. We evaluate the preprocessor’s performance and the statistical quality of the samples it generates. We thereby show that Genesis is a useful tool that eases the expression and creation of large and diverse program sets. |
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| ISSN: | 1058-9244 1875-919X |