Parsing and translation of expressions by genetic programming

We have investigated the potential for using genetic programming to evolve compiler parsing and translation routines for processing arithmetic and logical expressions as they are used in a typical programming language. Parsing and translation are important and complex real-world problems for which evolved solutions must make use of a range of programming constructs. The exercise also tests the ability of genetic programming to evolve extensive and appropriate use of abstract data types - namely, stacks. Experimentation suggests that the evolution of such code is achievable, provided that program function and terminal sets are judiciously chosen.