{"id":335825,"date":"2016-12-13T10:57:01","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T18:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=335825"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:09:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:09:22","slug":"type-directed-completion-partial-expressions","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/type-directed-completion-partial-expressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Type-Directed Completion of Partial Expressions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Modern programming frameworks provide enormous libraries arranged in complex structures, so much so that a large part of modern programming is searching for APIs that \u201csurely exist\u201d somewhere in an unfamiliar part of the framework. We present a novel way of phrasing a search for an unknown API: the programmer simply writes an expression leaving holes for the parts they do not know. We call these expressions <em>partial expressions<\/em>. We present an efficient algorithm that produces likely completions ordered by a ranking scheme based primarily on the similarity of the types of the APIs suggested to the types of the known expressions. This gives a powerful language for both API discovery and code completion with a small impedance mismatch from writing code. In an automated experiment on mature C# projects, we show our algorithm can place the intended expression in the top 10 choices over 80% of the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern programming frameworks provide enormous libraries arranged in complex structures, so much so that a large part of modern programming is searching for APIs that \u201csurely exist\u201d somewhere in an unfamiliar part of the framework. We present a novel way of phrasing a search for an unknown API: the programmer simply writes an expression leaving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"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-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-335825","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":"PLDI\u201912, June 11\u201316, 2012, Beijing, 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