Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example<\/i> methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-specific language and developing a synthesis algorithm that can learn programs in that language from user-provided examples. We present instantiations of this methodology for particular domains of tasks: (a) syntactic transformations of strings using restricted forms of regular expressions, conditionals, and loops, (b) semantic transformations of strings involving lookup in relational tables, and (c) layout transformations on spreadsheet tables. We have implemented this technology as an add-in for the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet system and have evaluated it successfully over several benchmarks picked from various Excel help forums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Millions of computer end users need to perform tasks over large spreadsheet data, yet lack the programming knowledge to do such tasks automatically. We present a programming by example methodology that allows end users to automate such repetitive tasks. Our methodology involves designing a domain-specific language and developing a synthesis algorithm that can learn programs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-238223","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2012-01-03","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"97\u2013105","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"Communications of the ACM","msr_volume":"55","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"Invited to CACM Research Highlights","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"329174","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"10.1145\/2240236.2240260","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"cacm12","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/cacm12.pdf","id":329174,"label_id":0},{"type":"doi","title":"10.1145\/2240236.2240260","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"sumitg","user_id":33755,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=sumitg"},{"type":"text","value":"William R. 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examples.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/654579"}]}},{"ID":361034,"post_title":"Program Synthesis","post_name":"program-synthesis","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2017-02-02 13:37:27","post_modified":"2020-01-24 08:27:25","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/program-synthesis\/","post_excerpt":"Introduction Program synthesis is the task of automatically discovering an executable piece of code given user intent expressed using various forms of constraints such as input-output examples, demonstrations, natural language, etc. Program synthesis has direct applications for various classes of users in the technology pyramid: (100s of millions of) End Users (people who have access to a computational device but are not expert programmers): Helping them to create small snippets of code for performing 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