Program Transformation

Many kinds of transformations of a program are possible:

• Optimization of various kinds. Low-level inefficiencies created by a program generation system can be removed.

• Specialization. Generic operations or program patterns can be specialized to the form needed for a specific implementation of an abstract data structure. OOP methods can be specialized for subclasses.

• Language translation. Transformations can change code into the syntax of the target language.

• Code expansion. Small amounts of input code can be transformed into large amounts of output code. The expansion can depend on specifications that are much smaller than the final code.

• Partial evaluation. Things that are constant at compile time can be evaluated and eliminated from code.

• Changing recursion to iteration

• Making code more readable

• Making code less readable ( code obfuscation)