Program understanding with the lambda calculus

A prerequisite of any attempt to build intelligent tools to assist in the programming process is a representation language for encoding programming knowledge. Languages that have been used for this purpose include the predicate calculus [5] and various program-schema languages [1,4]. This paper advocates a new candidate which is as expressive as the predicate calculus but more intimately connected w i th programming: the lambda calculus. Its advantages lie in its close resemblance to conventional programming languages, and in a straighforward model of inference by rewriting, which can be applied to automatic programming and program understanding. The use of the lambda calculus in an automatic program understander is described.