Generalized structured programs and loop trees

  • Authors:
  • Ward Douglas Maurer

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Science Department, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA

  • Venue:
  • Science of Computer Programming
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Any directed graph, even a flow graph representing ''spaghetti code'', is shown here to have at least one loop tree, which is a structure of loops within loops in which no loops overlap. The nodes of the graph may be rearranged in such a way that, with respect to their new order, every edge proceeds in the forward direction except for the loopbacks. Here a loopback goes from somewhere in a loop L to the head of L. We refer to such a rearrangement as a generalized structured program, in which forward goto statements remain unrestricted. Like a min-heap or a max-heap, a loop tree has an array representation, without pointers; it may be constructed in time no worse than O(n^2) for any program written in this fashion. A scalable version of this construction uses a label graph, whose only nodes are the labels of the given program. A graph has a unique loop tree if and only if it is reducible.