A New Linear Genetic Programming Approach Based on Straight Line Programs: Some Theoretical and Experimental Aspects

Tree encodings of programs are well known for their representative power and are used very often in Genetic Programming. In this paper we experiment with a new data structure, named straight line program (slp), to represent computer programs. The main features of this structure are described, new recombination operators for GP related to slp’s are introduced and a study of the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of families of slp’s is done. Experiments have been performed on symbolic regression problems. Results are encouraging and suggest that the GP approach based on slp’s consistently outperforms conventional GP based on tree structured representations.