Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/3394
Title: A post-placement side-effect removal algorithm
Authors: Harman, M
Hu, L
Hierons, RM
Munro, M
Zhang, X
Dolado, JJ
Otero, MC
Wegener, J
Keywords: Program Transformation; Program Comprehension; Side-Effects
Issue Date: 2002
Publisher: IEEE
Citation: IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2002) Montreal, pp. 2-11, Oct 2002
Abstract: Side-effects are widely believed to impede program comprehension and have a detrimental effect upon software maintenance. This paper introduces an algorithm for side-effect removal which splits the side-effects into their pure expression meaning and their state-changing meaning. Symbolic execution is used to determine the expression meaning, while transformation is used to place the state-changing part in a suitable location in a transformed version of the program. This creates a program which is semantically equivalent to the original but guaranteed to be free from side-effects. The paper also reports the results of an empirical study which demonstrates that the application of the algorithm causes a significant improvement in program comprehension.
URI: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/3394
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSM.2002.1167742
Appears in Collections:Computer Science
Dept of Computer Science Research Papers
Software Engineering (B-SERC)

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