The York Research Database

In this work we introduce Templar, a software framework for customising algorithms via the generative technique of template-method hyper-heuristics. We first discuss the need for such an approach, presenting Quicksort as an example. We provide a functional definition of template-method hyper-heuristics, describe how this is implemented by Templar, and show how Templar may be invoked using simple client-code. Finally, we describe experiments using Templar to define a ‘hyper-quicksort’ with the aim of reducing power consumption—the results demonstrate that the generated algorithm has significantly improved performance on the test set.