abstract = "In most genetic programming systems, candidate
solution programs themselves serve as the genetic
material upon which variation operators act. However,
because of the hierarchical structure of computer
programs, and the syntactic constraints that they must
obey, it is difficult to implement variation operators
that affect different parts of programs with uniform
probability. This can have detrimental effects on
evolutionary search. In prior work, structured programs
were linearised prior to variation in order to
facilitate uniformity, but this necessitated syntactic
repair after variation, which reintroduced
non-uniformities. In this chapter we describe a new
approach that uses linear genomes, from which
structured programs are expressed only for the purpose
of fitness testing. We present the new approach in
detail and show how it facilitates both uniform
variation and the evolution of programs with meaningful
structure.",