Exhibits, Demos & Posters
Concrete Partial Evaluation in Ruby
Authors
- Andrew Keep, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University
- Arun Chauhan, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University
Abstract
Software tools have become a central part of the scientific researchers’ toolbox, but developing them can prove a distraction from the central focus of a research team’s investigation. Dynamic languages, like Ruby, can provide an easy platform for rapid development and deployment of software that can be easily shared through SOAP, REST, or even RPC-style API interfaces with fellow researchers across the globe. In this extended abstract we present progress in addressing one of Ruby’s biggest shortcomings, performance. Our technique uses compiler analysis of Ruby’s C-based interpreter and core libraries in order to provide a basis for partial evaluation. The partial evaluator makes use of the results of this analysis along with a running Ruby session in order to evaluate more complex expressions than could normally be handled by traditional partial evaluation techniques, while ensuring that “unsafe” expressions are left for evaluation during runtime.
