PEPM 2021

The ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation (PEPM), which has a history going back to 1991 and has co-located with POPL every year since 2006, originates in the discoveries of practically useful automated techniques for evaluating programs with only partial input. Over the years, the scope of PEPM has expanded to include a variety of research areas centred around the theme of semantics-based program manipulation — the systematic exploitation of treating programs not only as subject to black-box execution, but also as data structures that can be generated, analysed, and transformed while establishing or maintaining important semantic properties.

Scope

In addition to the traditional PEPM topics (see below), PEPM 2021 welcomes submissions in new domains, in particular:

• Semantics based and machine-learning based program synthesis and program optimisation.

• Modelling, analysis, and transformation techniques for distributed and concurrent protocols and programs, such as session types, linear types, and contract specifications.

More generally, topics of interest for PEPM 2021 include, but are not limited to:

• Program and model manipulation techniques such as: supercompilation, partial evaluation, fusion, on-the-fly program adaptation, active libraries, program inversion, slicing, symbolic execution, refactoring, decompilation, and obfuscation.

• Techniques that treat programs/models as data objects including metaprogramming, generative programming, embedded domain-specific languages, program synthesis by sketching and inductive programming, staged computation, and model-driven program generation and transformation.

• Program analysis techniques that are used to drive program/model manipulation such as: abstract interpretation, termination checking, binding-time analysis, constraint solving, type systems, automated testing and test case generation.

• Application of the above techniques including case studies of program manipulation in real-world (industrial, open-source) projects and software development processes, descriptions of robust tools capable of effectively handling realistic applications, benchmarking. Examples of application domains include legacy program understanding and transformation, DSL implementations, visual languages and end-user programming, scientific computing, middleware frameworks and infrastructure needed for distributed and web-based applications, embedded and resource-limited computation, and security.

This list of categories is not exhaustive, and we encourage submissions describing new theories and applications related to semantics-based program manipulation in general. If you have a question as to whether a potential submission is within the scope of the workshop, please contact the programme co-chairs, Sam Lindley (Sam.Lindley@ed.ac.uk) and Torben Mogensen (torbenm@di.ku.dk).

Accepted Papers

Call for Papers

Submission categories and guidelines

Two kinds of submissions will be accepted:

• Regular Research Papers should describe new results, and will be judged on originality, correctness, significance, and clarity. Regular research papers must not exceed 12 pages.

• Short Papers may include tool demonstrations and presentations of exciting if not fully polished research, and of interesting academic, industrial, and open-source applications that are new or unfamiliar. Short papers must not exceed 6 pages.

References and appendices are not included in page limits. Appendices may not be read by reviewers. Both kinds of submissions should be typeset using the two-column ‘sigplan’ sub-format of the new ‘acmart’ format available at:

http://sigplan.org/Resources/Author/

and submitted electronically via HotCRP:

https://pepm21.hotcrp.com/

Reviewing will be single-blind.

Submissions are welcome from PC members (except the two co-chairs).

Accepted regular research papers will appear in formal proceedings published by ACM, and be included in the ACM Digital Library. Accepted short papers do not constitute formal publications and will not appear in the proceedings.

At least one author of each accepted contribution must attend the workshop virtually to present the work. In the case of tool demonstration papers, a live demonstration of the described tool is expected.

Important dates

• Paper submission deadline : Thursday 8th October 2020 (AoE)
• Author notification : Thursday 12th November 2020 (AoE)
• Workshop : Monday 18th January 2021 to Tuesday 19th January 2021

Invited speakers

• Pat Hanrahan (Stanford). Hardware DSLs.

• Julia Lawall (Inria). Program manipulation of C code: from partial evaluation to semantic patches for the Linux kernel.

• Matúš Tejiščák (Chordify). Erasure in dependently typed programming.

Best paper award

PEPM 2021 continues the tradition of a Best Paper award. The winner will be announced at the workshop.