Semantics-Based Program Manipulation

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This research concerns the design and implementation of tools for interactive computer programming. The research focuses on the creation of tools that furnish language- specific, semantics-based, program manipulation operations. The project investigates both, program slicing and partial evaluation. In particular, the research studies (1) whether techniques developed for one of the operations can be applied to the other, and (2) whether the two operations can be combined to support more powerful techniques for manipulating programs. The research focuses on two areas. The first is operations for semantics-based program manipulation. Examples include program specialization, symbolic composition, and program generalization. The second is static analysis of programs. Research is conducted on static analysis methods needed in carrying out the above operations. Pointer analysis is of particular importance. In both areas the scope of the work includes development of theoretical foundations, algorithm design, and system implementation. One testbed for the ideas is the prototype C slicer, which currently is capable of slicing large (22,000-line) programs. ***