Precise Executable Interprocedural Slices

Abstract

The notion of a program slice, originally introduced by Mark Weiser, is useful in program debugging, automatic parallelization, program integration, and software maintenance. A slice of a program is taken with respect to a program point p and a variable x; the slice consists of all statements of the program that might affect the value of x at point p. An interprocedural slice is a slice of an entire program, where the slice crosses the boundaries of procedure calls. Weiser's original interprocedural-slicing algorithm produces imprecise slices that are executable programs. A recent algorithm developed by Horwitz, Reps, and Binkley produces more precise 1993 slices by more accurately identifying those statements that might affect the values of x at point p. These slices, however, are not executable. An extension to their algorithm that produces more precise executable interprocedural slices is described together with a proof of correctness for the new algorithm. © 1993, ACM. All rights reserved.