Symbolic Semantics and Program Reduction

A class of transformations of functional programs based on symbolic execution and simplification of conditionals is presented. The operational symbolic semantics of a family of functional languages is defined exploiting a set-theoretic notion of symbolic constants. An effective transformation able to simplify a functional program via removal of conditionals is discussed. Finally, it is shown that a structural approach, based on abstract data type specifications, provides a suitable representation for symbolic constants.