An Introduction to Online and Offline Partial Evaluation using a Simple Flowchart Language

These notes present basic principles of partial evaluation using the simple imperative language FCL (a language of flowcharts introduced by Jones and Gomard). Topics include online partial evaluators, offline partial evaluators, and binding-time analysis. The goal of the lectures is to give a rigorous presentation of the semantics of partial evaluation systems, while also providing details of actual implementations. Each partial evaluation system is specified by an operational semantics, and each is implemented in Scheme and Java. Exercises include proving various properties about the systems using the operational semantics, and modifying and extending the implementations.

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