Program Slicing

AbstractProgram slicing is a family of program decomposition techniques based on extracting statements relevant to a computation. Program slicing as originally defined produces a smaller program that reproduces a subset of the original program's behavior. This is advantageous because by excluding irrelevant statements, the slice can collect an algorithm for a given calculation that may be scattered throughout a program. It is easier for a programmer interested in a subset of the program's behavior to understand the corresponding slice than to deal with the entire program. The utility and power of program slicing comes from the potential automation of tedious and error prone tasks. Program slicing has applications in program debugging, program testing, parallel program execution, and software maintenance. Several variations on this theme have been developed, including static slicing, dynamic slicing, hybrid slicing, program dicing, and decomposition slicing.