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Inverting Programs

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The Science of Programming

Part of the book series: Text and Monographs in Computer Science ((MCS))

Abstract

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to run a program backwards or, better yet, to derive from one program P a second program P−1 that computes the inverse of P? That means that running P followed by P−1 would be the same as not running any program at all! Also, if we had the result of executing P, but had lost the input, we could execute P−1 to determine that input. This chapter is devoted to having fun inverting programs.

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© 1981 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Gries, D. (1981). Inverting Programs. In: The Science of Programming. Text and Monographs in Computer Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5983-1_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5983-1_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-96480-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-5983-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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