Program slicing: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:09, 21 May 2013

Revision as of 16:10, 21 May 2013

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In [[computer programming]], '''program slicing''' is the computation of the set of programs statements, the '''program slice''', that may affect the values of some specificpredetermined variables at some point of interest, referred to as a '''slicing criterion'''. Program slicing can be used in [[debugging]] to locate source of errors more easily. Other applications of slicing include [[software maintenance]], [[Optimization (computer science)|optimization]], [[Program analysis (computer science)|program analysis]], and [[Non-interference (security)|information flow control]].

Slicing techniques have been seeing a rapid development since the original definition by [[Mark Weiser]]. At first, slicing was only static, i.e., applied on the source code with no other information than the source code. [[Bogdan Korel]] and [[Janusz Laski]] introduced ''dynamic slicing'', which works on a specific execution of the program (for a given execution trace). Other forms of slicing exist, for instance path slicing.