Grammatical Evolution : Evolving Programs for an Arbitrary Language

Conor Ryan, JJ Collins & Michael O Neill

Dept. Of Computer Science And Information Systems
University of Limerick
Ireland
{Conor.Ryan|J.J.Collins|Michael.ONeill}@ul.ie

Abstract:

We describe a Genetic Algorithm that can evolve complete programs. Using a variable length linear genome to govern how a Backus Naur Form grammar definition is mapped to a program, expressions and programs of arbitrary complexity may be evolved. Other automatic programming methods are described, before our system, Grammatical Evolution, is applied to a symbolic regression problem.