[Haskell-cafe] Partial Evaluation

[jim burton]

I am reading Hudak's paper Modular Domain Specific Languages and Tools 
[1] and am confused by his use of the term `Partial Evaluation'. I 
understand it to mean supplying some but not all arguments to a 
function, e.g. (+3) but it seems to mean something else too. This is in 
the context of optimising performance:

"We have used existing partial evaluation techniques to do 
this...Unfortunately, there does not currently exist a suitable, 
easy-to-use partial evaluator for Haskell. Our approach was to convert 
the Haskell program to Scheme, partially evaluate the Scheme program, 
and then translate back into Haskell."

What does P.E, mean here?

Thanks,


[1] Available 
http://wiki.ittc.ku.edu/lambda/Image:Hudak-Modular_Domain_Specific_Languages_and_Tools.pdf