Understanding the Expressive Power of Unhygienic Substitution in Metaprogramming via Combinatory Logic

10/08/2019

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by   Martin Lester, et al.

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Recent work on combinatory logic demonstrates a compositional translation from lambda calculus that gives meaning to open terms. As the meaning of open terms is a key difficulty in the study of metaprogramming, we investigate whether this idea can be extended to metaprogramming systems with hygienic and unhygienic substitution, specifically λ_e^→ and λ_S. We conclude that there is quantitative evidence to support the claim that metaprogramming with unhygienic substitution is more powerful than metaprogramming with hygienic substitution.