Normal form approach to compiler design (Q1323320)

This paper demonstrates how reduction to normal form can help in the design of a correct compiler for Dijkstra's guarded command language. The compilation strategy is to transform a source program, by a series of algebraic manipulations, into a normal form which describes the behaviour of a stored-program computer. Each transformation elminates high-level language constructs in favour of lower-level constructs. The correctness of the compiler follows from the correctness of each of the algebraic transformations.