Automating the Selection of Implementation Structures

An approach to automating the selection of implementations for the data representations used in a program is presented. Formalisms are developed for specifying data representations and implementation structures. Using these formalisms, algorithms are presented which will recognize the use in a program of known data representations (e. g., stacks, queues, lists, arrays, etc.) so that alternative implementations can be retrieved from a library and which will, for those representations not recognized, generate alternative implementations with a wide range of space-time tradeoffs. Experience with using these algorithms indicates they are reasonably successful, although there are several problems that must be solved before automatic implementation selection systems will be practical.