article

Open access

Slicing as a program transformation

Authors:

Hussein ZedanAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 29, Issue 2

Pages 7 - es

https://doi.org/10.1145/1216374.1216375

Published: 01 April 2007 Publication History

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide a unified mathematical framework for program slicing which places all slicing work for sequential programs on a sound theoretical foundation. The main advantage to a mathematical approach is that it is not tied to a particular representation. In fact the mathematics provides a sound basis for any particular representation. We use the WSL (wide-spectrum language) program transformation theory as our framework. Within this framework we define a new semantic relation, semirefinement, which lies between semantic equivalence and semantic refinement. Combining this semantic relation, a syntactic relation (called reduction), and WSL's remove statement, we can give mathematical definitions for backwards slicing, conditioned slicing, static and dynamic slicing, and semantic slicing as program transformations in the WSL transformation theory. A novel technique of “encoding” operational semantics within a denotational semantics allows the framework to handle “operational slicing”. The theory also enables the concept of slicing to be applied to nondeterministic programs. These transformations are implemented in the industry-strength FermaT transformation system.

References

[1]

Agrawal, H. and Horgan, J. R. 1990. Dynamic program slicing. SIGPLAN Not. 25, (Jun.), 246--256.

Digital Library

[2]

Back, R. J. R. 1980. Correctness preserving program refinements. Mathematical Centre Tracts No. 131, Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam.

[3]

Back, R. J. R. 1988. A calculus of refinements for program derivations. Acta Inf. 25, 593--624.

Digital Library

[4]

Back, R. J. R. and von Wright, J. 1990. Refinement concepts formalised in higher-order logic. Formal Aspects Comput. 2, 247--272.

[5]

Balzer, R. 1969. EXDAMS---EXtendable debugging and monitoring system. In Proceedings of the AFIPS SJCC.

[6]

Beszedas, A., Farago, C., Szabo, Z. M., Csirik, J., and Gyimothy, T. 2002. Union slices for program maintenance. In 18th International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM) (Montreal, Quebec, Oct. 3--6).

Digital Library

[7]

Bilardi, G. and Pingali, K. 1999. The static single assignment form and its computation. Tech. Rep., Cornell University, July. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/Bernoulli/papers/ssa.ps.

[8]

Binkley, D., Harman, M., and Danicic, S. 2003. Amorphous program slicing. J. Syst. Softw. 68, (Oct.) 45--64.

Digital Library

[9]

Binkley, D. and Gallagher, K. 1996. A survey of program slicing. In Advances in Computers, M. Zelkowitz, ed. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.

[10]

Bohm, C. and Jacopini, G. 1966. Flow diagrams, Turing machines and languages with only two formation rules. Commun. ACM 9, (May), 366--371.

Digital Library

[11]

Canfora, G., Cimitile, A., and de Lucia, A. 1998. Conditioned program slicing. Inf. Softw. Technol. 40, 595--607.

[12]

Cytron, R., Ferrante, J., Rosen, B. K., Wegman, M. N., and Zadeck, F. K. 1991. Efficiently computing static single assignment form and the control dependance graph. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 13, (Jul.), 451--490.

Digital Library

[13]

Danicic, S. 1999. Dataflow minimal slicing. Ph.D. thesis, London University.

[14]

De Lucia., A., Harman, M., Hierons, R., and Krinke, J. 2003. Unions of slices are not slices. In the 7th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (Benevento, Italy, Mar.).

Digital Library

[15]

Dijkstra, E. W. 1976. A Discipline of Programming. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Digital Library

[16]

Forgacs, I. and Gyimothy, T. 1997. An efficient interprocedural slicing method for large programs. In Proceedings of the SEKE, 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (Madrid, Spain).

[17]

Harman, M. and Danicic, S. 1997. Amorphous program slicing. In the 5th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension (IWPC) (Dearborn, MI, May).

Digital Library

[18]

Harman, M., Danicic, S., and Hierons, R. M. 2000. ConSIT: A conditioned program slicer. In the 5th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM) (San Jose, CA, Oct.).

Digital Library

[19]

Harmon, M., Hu, L., Munro, M., and Zhang, X. 2001. GUSTT: An amorphous slicing system which combines slicing and transformation. In Proceedings of the 8th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) (Los Alamitos, CA).

Digital Library

[20]

Horwitz, S., Reps, T., and Binkley, D. 1990. Interprocedural slicing using dependence graphs. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 12, (Jan.), 26--60.

Digital Library

[21]

Karp, C. R. 1964. Languages with Expressions of Infinite Length. North-Holland, Amsterdam.

[22]

Korel, B. and Laski, J. 1988. Dynamic program slicing. Inf. Process. Lett. 29, (Oct.), 155--163.

Digital Library

[23]

Morgan, C. C. 1994. Programming from Specifications, 2^nd ed. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Digital Library

[24]

Morgan, C. C. and Robinson, K. 1987. Specification statements and refinements. IBM J. Res. Develop. 31.

Digital Library

[25]

Pingali, K. and Bilardi, G. 1997. Optimal control dependence computation and the Roman Chariots problem. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., (May). http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/Bernoulli/papers/toplas97.ps.

Digital Library

[26]

Stoy, J. E. 1977. Denotational Semantics: The Scott-Strachy Approach to Programming Language Theory. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Digital Library

[27]

Tennet, R. D. 1976. The denotational semantics of programming languages. Commun. ACM 19, (Aug.), 437--453.

Digital Library

[28]

Tip, F. 1995. A survey of program slicing techniques. J. Program. Lang. 3, (Sept.), 121--189.

[29]

Venkatesh, G. A. 1991. The semantic approach to program slicing. SIGPLAN Not. 26, 107--119. In Proceedings of the SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (Jun. 26--28).

Digital Library

[30]

Ward, M. 1989. Proving program refinements and transformations. Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University.

Digital Library

[31]

Ward, M. 1990. Derivation of a sorting algorithm. Tech. Rep., Durham University. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/foundation2-t.ps.gz.

[32]

Ward, M. 1993. Abstracting a specification from code. J. Softw. Maintenance Res. Pract. 5, (Jun.), 101--122. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/prog-spec.ps.gz.

[33]

Ward, M. 1994a. Foundations for a practical theory of program refinement and transformation. Tech. Rep., Durham University. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/foundation2-t.ps.gz.

[34]

Ward, M. 1994b. Reverse engineering through formal transformation Knuth's Polynomial Addition algorithm. Comput. J. 37, 795--813. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/poly-t.ps.gz.

[35]

Ward, M. 1995. A definition of abstraction. J. Softw. Maintenance Res. Pract. 7, (Nov.), 443--450. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/abstraction-t.ps.gz.

Digital Library

[36]

Ward, M. 1996. Derivation of data intensive algorithms by formal transformation. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 22, (Sept.), 665--686. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/sw-alg.ps.gz.

Digital Library

[37]

Ward, M. 1999. Assembler to C migration using the FermaT transformation system. In the International Conference on Software Maintenance (Oxford, UK, Aug. 30--Sept. 3).

Digital Library

[38]

Ward, M. 2000. Reverse engineering from assembler to formal specifications via program transformations. In Proceedings of the 7th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Nov. 23--25). http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/wcre2000.ps.gz.

Digital Library

[39]

Ward, M. 2001. The formal transformation approach to source code analysis and manipulation. In the IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (Florence, Italy, Nov. 10).

[40]

Ward, M. 2004. Pigs from sausages&quest; Reengineering from assembler to C via FermaT transformations. Sci. Comput. Program. 52, 213--255.

Digital Library

[41]

Ward, M. and Bennett, K. H. 1995. Formal methods to aid the evolution of software. Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 5, 25--47. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/evolution-t.ps.gz.

[42]

Ward, M., Zedan, H., and Hardcastle, T. 2005. Conditioned semantic slicing via abstraction and refinement in FermaT. In the 9th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR) (Manchester, UK, Mar. 21--23).

Digital Library

[43]

Weiser, M. 1984a. Program slicing. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 10, (Jul.), 352--357.

Digital Library

[44]

Weiser, M. 1984b. Programmers use slices when debugging. Commun. ACM 25. (Jul.), 352--357.

Digital Library

[45]

Yang, H. and Ward, M. 2003. Successful Evolution of Software Systems. Artech House. ISBN 1-58053-349-3.

Digital Library

[46]

Younger, E. J. and Ward, M. 1993. Inverse engineering is a simple real time program. J. Softw. Maintenance Res. Pract. 6, 197--234. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~m-ward/martin/papers/eddy-t.ps.gz.

[47]

Zhang, X., Munro, M., Harman, M., and Hu, L. 2002. Mechanized operational semantics of WSL. In the IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) (Los Alamitos, CA).

Digital Library

Cited By

Yernaux GVanhoof W(2023)A Dataflow Analysis for Comparing and Reordering Predicate ArgumentsElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.385.5385(41-54)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.385.5
Masud ALisper B(2021)Semantic Correctness of Dependence-based Slicing for Interprocedural, Possibly Nonterminating ProgramsACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/343448942:4(1-56)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3434489
Danicic SLaurence M(2018)Static Backward Slicing of Non-deterministic Programs and SystemsACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/288609840:3(1-46)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2886098
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Slicing as a program transformation
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
      1. Software implementation planning
        Software design techniques
    2. Software development process management

Recommendations

Conditioned semantic slicing for abstraction; industrial experiment

One of the most challenging tasks a programmer can face is attempting to analyse and understand a legacy assembler system. Many features of assembler make analysis difficult, and these are the same features that make migration from assembler to a high-...
Syntax-Directed Amorphous Slicing

An amorphous slice of a program is constructed with respect to a set of variables. The amorphous slice is an executable program which preserves the behaviour of the original on the variables of interest. Unlike syntax-preserving slices, amorphous slices ...
Deriving a Slicing Algorithm via FermaT Transformations

In this paper, we present a case study in deriving an algorithm from a formal specification via FermaT transformations. The general method (which is presented in a separate paper) is extended to a method for deriving an implementation of a program ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems Volume 29, Issue 2

April 2007

327 pages

ISSN:0164-0925

EISSN:1558-4593

DOI:10.1145/1216374

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 April 2007

Published in TOPLAS Volume 29, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

26
Total Citations
View Citations
1,041
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)85
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)9

Reflects downloads up to 24 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Yernaux GVanhoof W(2023)A Dataflow Analysis for Comparing and Reordering Predicate ArgumentsElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.385.5385(41-54)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.385.5
Masud ALisper B(2021)Semantic Correctness of Dependence-based Slicing for Interprocedural, Possibly Nonterminating ProgramsACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/343448942:4(1-56)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3434489
Danicic SLaurence M(2018)Static Backward Slicing of Non-deterministic Programs and SystemsACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/288609840:3(1-46)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2886098
Bowen JHinchey MJanicke HWard MZedan H(2018)Formality, Agility, Security, and Evolution in Software EngineeringSoftware Technology: 10 Years of Innovation in IEEE Computer10.1002/9781119174240.ch16(282-292)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119174240.ch16
Mastroeni IZanardini D(2017)Abstract Program SlicingACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/302905218:1(1-58)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3029052
Guo QLi XXu GFeng Z(2017)MP-MIDFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2016.06.01070:C(42-47)Online publication date: 1-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.future.2016.06.010
Ward MZedan H(2016)The formal semantics of program slicing for nonterminating computationsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.180329:1Online publication date: 4-Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.1803
Ward MZedan H(2014)Provably correct derivation of algorithms using FermaTFormal Aspects of Computing10.1007/s00165-013-0287-226:5(993-1031)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00165-013-0287-2
Alomari HCollard MMaletic JAlhindawi NMeqdadi O(2014)srcSliceJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.165126:11(931-961)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.1651
Androutsopoulos KClark DHarman MKrinke JTratt L(2013)State-based model slicingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/2501654.250166745:4(1-36)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2501654.2501667
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents