Learning functional programs with function invention and reuse

Abstract: Inductive programming (IP) is a field whose main goal is synthesising programs that respect a set of examples, given some form of background knowledge. This paper is concerned with a subfield of IP, inductive functional programming (IFP). We explore the idea of generating modular functional programs, and how those allow for function reuse, with the aim to reduce the size of the programs. We introduce two algorithms that attempt to solve the problem and explore type based pruning techniques in the context of modular programs. By experimenting with the implementation of one of those algorithms, we show reuse is important (if not crucial) for a variety of problems and distinguished two broad classes of programs that will generally benefit from function reuse.