Programming with Equations

Abstract

Equations provide a convenient notation for defining many computations, for example, for programming language interpreters.This paper illustrates the usefulness of equational programs, describes the problems involved in implementing equational programs, and investigates practical solutions to those problems.The goal of the study is a system to automatically transform a set of equations into an efficient program which exactly implements the logical meaning of the equations.This logical meaning may be defined in terms of the traditional mathematical interpretation of equations, without using advanced computing concepts._