Effective Partial Evaluation: Principles and Applications

We report here a successful experiment in using partial evaluation on a realistic program, namely the Sun commercial RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol. The Sun RPC is implemented in a highly generic way that offers multiple opportunities of specialization. Our study also shows the incapacity of traditional binding-time analyses to treat real system programs. Our experiment has been made with Tempo, a partial evaluator for C programs targeted towards system software. Tempo’s binding-time analysis had to be improved to integrate partially static data structures (interprocedurally), context sensitivity, use sensitivity and return sensitivity. The Sun RPC experiment files, including the specialized implementation, are publicly available upon request to the authors.