[BF96a] An automatic interprocedural analysis for the understanding of scientific application programs
Conférence Internationale avec comité de lecture :
Seminar on partial evaluation, Dagsthul castle,
January 1996,
pp.1-16,
Series LNCS 1110,
motcle:
Résumé:
This paper reports on an approach for improving the understanding of old programs which have become very complex due to numerous extensions. We have
adapted partial evaluation techniques for program understanding. These techniques mainly use propagation through statements and simplifications of statements. We
focus here on the automatic interprocedural analysis and we specify both tasks (propagation and simplification) for call-statements, in terms of inference rules with
notations taken from the formal specification languages B and VDM. We describe how we have implemented that interprocedural analysis in a tool, and how it can
be used to improve program understanding. The difficulty of that analysis is due to the lack of well defined interprocedural mechanisms and the complexity of visibility
rules in Fortran.
Keywords: software maintenance of legacy code, program understanding, program specialization, interprocedural analysis, inference rules, natural
semantics, formal specification, Fortran.