---
title: "A System which Automatically Improves Programs"
authors:
  - "John Darlington"
  - "Rod M. Burstall"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1973/61"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1973/0061.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1973
pages: "479-484"
track: "Automatic Programming"
keywords:
---

# A System which Automatically Improves Programs

John Darlington, Rod M. Burstall

*Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 479-484.

## Abstract

We give methods of mechanically converting programs that are easy to understand into more efficient ones, converting recursion equations using high level operations into lower level flowchart programs. The main transformations involved are (i) recursion removal (ii) eliminating common subexpressions and combining loops (iii) replacing procedure calls by their bodies (iv) introducing assi~nments which overwrite list cells no longer in use tcompile-time garbage collection).