Forward dynamic slicing

Abstract

Program slicing is a very important part of program development and maintenance . It is used for a number of applications such as program debugging, reverse engineering, software testing, software maintenance, etc. It is a programmer’s most important tool for debugging. We have come a long way since Weiser first introduced the concept of slicing. Initially, static slices were used but now mainly dynamic slices are being used. Programmers worldwide are busy trying to develop better and more efficient slicing techniques. In this paper we have proposed a new precise forward dynamic slicing algorithm.Our algorithm is based on marking and unmarking the stable and unstable edges in the PDG according to their execution. We have calculated slices by using intermediate representation in the form of program dependency graph(PDG). We have intoduced modified notions of stable and unstable edges and used them to draw MPDG(Modified Program Dependency Graph). We have tested our algorithm by taking two sample programs. Our research has been confined to simple C and C++ programs.