symbolic computation, sort of

[Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de)]

Mathew Yeates wrote:
> I want to feed the function
> 
> def f(x):
>     t = 2*x
>     b = t+1
>     return b
> 
> to a tool and have it tell me that f(x) -> 2x+1

You could feed to f a special object which overloaded all the
arithmetic operations to build a symbolic expression tree.
What you got out would then represent all the operations
performed.

This would automatically expand any nested function calls.

It would only work if f and any functions called by it
contained only straight-line code -- no if-statements,
loops or anything like that.

You may also want to perform some simplifications on
the resulting expression. That can get tricky -- people
have written entire theses on subjects like that...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg