Formalizing Executable Dynamic and Forward Slicing

Authors:
Dave Binkley;Sebastian Danicic;Tibor Gyimothy;Mark Harman;Akos Kiss;Lahcen Ouarbya
Affiliations:
Loyola College, Baltimore MD;University of London, UK;University of Szeged, Hungary;Brunel University, UK;University of Szeged, Hungary;University of London, UK
Venue:
SCAM '04 Proceedings of the Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, Fourth IEEE International Workshop
Year:
2004

Citing 0
Cited 7

A brief survey of program slicing

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
A formalisation of the relationship between forms of program slicing

Science of Computer Programming - Special issue on source code analysis and manipulation (SCAM 2005)
Theoretical foundations of dynamic program slicing

Theoretical Computer Science
Formal specification of program slicing

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
A trajectory-based strict semantics for program slicing

Theoretical Computer Science
A unifying theory of control dependence and its application to arbitrary program structures

Theoretical Computer Science
A vocabulary of program slicing-based techniques

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper uses a projection theory of slicing to formalize the definition of executable dynamic and forward program slicing. Previous definitions, when given, have been operational, and previous descriptions have been algorithmic. The projection framework is used to provide a declarative formulation in terms of the different equivalences preserved by the different forms of slicing. The analysis of dynamic slicing reveals that the slicing criterion introduced by Korel and Laski contains three inter-woven criteria. It is shown how these three conceptually distinct criteria can be disentangled to reveal two new criteria. The analysis of dynamic slicing also reveals that the subsumes relationship between static and dynamic slicing is more intricate that previous authors have claimed. Finally, the paper uses the projection theory to investigate theoretical properties of forward slicing. This is achieved by first re-formulating forward slicing to provide an executable forward slice. This definition allows for formal investigation of the relationship between forward and backward slicing.