Program Slicing for Large Systems

Christoph Steindl
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Institute for Practical Computer Science
Altenbergerstraße 69, A-4040 Linz
steindl@ssw.uni-linz.ac.at

Abstract

A program slice consists of the parts of a program that (potentially) affect the values computed at some point of interest, referred to as a slicing criterion. Program slicing uses control flow and data flow information to visualise dependences and assist the programmer in debugging, program understanding, and program maintenance. We describe a program slicing tool for large systems which are built of modules. Two distinctive features of our Slicer are the support for slicing large systems (intermodular slicing) and the usage of user-feedback during the computation of data flow information (combining static and dynamic information, yielding semi-static slices).

Paper at ReTIS'97, Klagenfurt, Austria, December 1997.
Published in Schriftenreihe der Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, Band 107 (pp. 131-143), ISBN 3-85403-107-6, Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, 1998.
You can download the full paper in Postscript, in compressed Postscript, or click here to browse the slides of the presentation online.