Accelerating Syntax-Guided Program Synthesis by Optimizing Domain-Specific Languages

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Authors: Zhentao Ye, Ruyi Ji, Yingfei Xiong, Xin Zhang
Cited by: 1
References: 29

Abstract

Syntax-guided program synthesis relies on domain-specific languages (DSLs) to constrain the search space and improve efficiency. However, manually designing optimal DSLs is challenging and often results in suboptimal performance. In this paper, we propose AMaze , a novel framework that automatically optimizes DSLs to accelerate synthesis. AMaze iteratively refines a DSL by identifying key program fragments, termed feature components, whose enumeration ranks correlate with synthesis time. Using a dynamic-programming-based algorithm to calculate enumeration ranks of feature components and a machine learning model based on them, AMaze estimates synthesis cost instead of directly invoking the synthesizer, which is impractical due to high computational cost. We evaluate AMaze on state-of-the-art synthesizers, including DryadSynth , Duet , Polygen , and EUsolver , across multiple domains. Empirical results demonstrate that AMaze achieves up to 4.35× speedup, effectively reducing synthesis time while maintaining expressiveness.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Software Engineering Research Logic programming and type systems Software Testing and Debugging Techniques

Publication details

Journal / source
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Volume
10
Issue
POPL
Pages
1066–1093
Publication date
8 January 2026
Language
EN