abstract = "Program synthesis aims to mechanize the task of
programming from the user intent (expressed in various
forms like pre/post conditions, examples, sketches,
etc). There are many approaches to program synthesis
that are usually implemented in isolation: deductive,
syntax-based, inductive, etc. In this paper, we
describe PSMF2, a program synthesizer that combines
model finder and genetic programming. PSMF2 takes as
user intent examples and a soft sketch: a new kind of
user intent defined as a set of commands that must
appear in the synthesized program (and that are in no
particular order of execution). The output of PSMF2 is
a general purpose imperative program. The combination
of inductive synthesis and genetic programming has
allowed PSMF2 to synthesize 7 programs (IntSQRT,
Majority of 5, Majority of 8, Max of 4, Modulo,
Factorial, and Fibonacci) found in the SyGuS
competition, the iJava and IntroClass, and the Genetic
programming communities. We carried out an empirical
evaluation on the synthesis time of these 7 programs
and the mean time varied from 56.4 seconds (Majority of
5) to 15.9 minutes (Fibonacci).",