Editing Partial evaluation (section)

==Futamura projections==
A particularly interesting example of the use of partial evaluation, first described in the 1970s by Yoshihiko Futamura,<ref>[http://fi.ftmr.info/ Yoshihiko Futamura's website].</ref> is when ''prog'' is an [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] for a [[programming language]].

If ''I''<sub>static</sub> is source code designed to run inside that interpreter, then partial evaluation of the interpreter with respect to this data/program produces ''prog''*, a version of the interpreter that only runs that source code, is written in the implementation language of the interpreter, does not require the source code to be resupplied, and runs faster than the original combination of the interpreter and the source. In this case ''prog''* is effectively a compiled version of ''I''<sub>static</sub>.

This technique is known as the first Futamura projection, of which there are three:
# Specializing an interpreter for given source code, yielding an executable.
# Specializing the specializer for the interpreter (as applied in #1), yielding a compiler.
# Specializing the specializer for itself (as applied in #2), yielding a tool that can convert any interpreter to an equivalent compiler.

They were described by Futamura in Japanese in 1971<ref>{{citation 
| title=Partial Evaluation of Computation Process --- An approach to a Compiler-Compiler
| volume=54-C
| journal=Transactions of the Institute of Electronics and Communications Engineers of Japan
| pages=721–728
| year=1971}}</ref> and in English in 1983.<ref>{{cite book |first=Y. |last=Futamura |chapter=Partial computation of programs |chapter-url= |title=RIMS Symposia on Software Science and Engineering |publisher=Springer |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |volume=147 |date=1983 |isbn=3-540-11980-9 |pages= 1–35|doi=10.1007/3-540-11980-9_13 |hdl=2433/103401}}</ref>