Automatic Compilation of Logical Specifications into Efficient Programs

We describe an automatic programmer, or "compiler" which accepts as input a predicate calculus specification of a set to generate or a condition to test, along with a description of the underlying representation of the data. This compiler searches a space of possible algorithms for the one that is expected to be most efficient. We describe the knowledge that is and is not available to this compiler, and its corresponding capabilities and limitations. This compiler is now regularly used to produce large programs.