Compilation is a form of synthesis in which a program in a high-level language is transformed to machine code. This translation is usually achieved in several phases in which a high-level language is first translted into an intermediate representation. Instruction selection then translates the intermediate representation into machine instructions.

The compilation process usually also involves a number of ProgramRephrasings^?. For example, ProgramNormalizations such as IrCanonicalization^? and AlgebraicSimplification^? and various forms of ProgramOptimizations.

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In the GlasgowHaskellCompiler^? compilation is expressed as much as possible as a series of transformations.

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CategoryTransformation | -- EelcoVisser - 03 May 2001