Forward Static Program Slicing

Abstract

Program slicing is a practical disintegration methodology that omits program modules that are irrelevant to a particular computation process based on a criterion known as the slicing criterion. The original program’s semantics is projected through the computation of an executable program formed by the left over modules called a slice. Using this methodology we can automatically determine the relevance of a module in a particular computation. Once such modules are ascertained amongst the program, the testing process takes considerably less effort and time because testing phase generally accounts for more than one third of time during the software development cycle. Slicing applications spread out through debugging methodologies to authentication of properties done through finite state models are appraised. Program slicing methodology reduces the effort of a software designer/coder and enthusiasts as well to directly get to the core of the problem. Forward slices contain all parts of the program that might be influenced by the variable. Static slicing may be used to identify these parts of the program that potentially contribute to the computation of the selected function for all possible programs inputs. Static slicing is helpful to gain a general understanding of these parts of the program that contribute to the computation to the selected function. In this project work, we have developed a forward static slicing algorithm. We have used file tracing to compute the forward static slices of a simple program. We have implemented our algorithm by using Java in net beans IDE on windows platform. The experimental results show that as the number of statements increase the slice computation time also increases raciprocally.