H-PIPE: Facilitating Hierarchical Program Evolution through Skip Nodes

To evolve structured programs we introduce H-PIPE, a hierarchical extension of Probabilistic Incremental Program Evolution (PIPE). Structure is induced by "hierarchical instructions" (HIs) limited to top-level, structuring program parts. "Skip nodes" (SNs) inspired by biology''s introns (non-coding segments) allow for switching program parts on and off. In our experiments H-PIPE outperforms PIPE, and SNs facilitate synthesis of certain structured programs but not unstructured ones. We conclude that introns can be particularly useful in the presence of structural bias.

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