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Stepping Stones to Inductive Synthesis of Low-Level Looping Programs
Inductive program synthesis, from input/output examples, can provide an
opportunity to automatically create programs from scratch without presupposing
the algorithmic form of the solution. For induction of general programs with
loops (as opposed to loop-free programs, or synthesis for domain-specific
languages), the state of the art is at the level of introductory programming
assignments. Most problems that require algorithmic subtlety, such as fast
sorting, have remained out of reach without the benefit of significant
problem-specific background knowledge. A key challenge is to identify cues that
are available to guide search towards correct looping programs. We present
MAKESPEARE, a simple delayed-acceptance hillclimbing method that synthesizes
low-level looping programs from input/output examples. During search, delayed
acceptance bypasses small gains to identify significantly-improved stepping
stone programs that tend to generalize and enable further progress. The method
performs well on a set of established benchmarks, and succeeds on the
previously unsolved "Collatz Numbers" program synthesis problem. Additional
benchmarks include the problem of rapidly sorting integer arrays, in which we
observe the emergence of comb sort (a Shell sort variant that is empirically
fast). MAKESPEARE has also synthesized a record-setting program on one of the
puzzles from the TIS-100 assembly language programming game.Comment: AAAI 201
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