Formalizing Program Slicing Using Z
Xu Sheng-hua · Journal of Chinese Computer Systems · 2007
Program slicing is a well-known technique that has been used in a variety of software engineering areas,such as comprehension,understanding,maintenance,debugging,testing,reuse,metrics,etc.Recently, more and more researchers have worked with program slicing.However,the lack of formal semantic specification for it indicates the existence of potential semantic inconsistency and ambiguity in these activities.This paper represents a research effort towards the semantic formalization for program slicing technique using Z Schema Calculus.General aspects of program slicing are considered,i.e. program dependence graphs and program slicing algorithm.This formalization could help in the correct understanding of program slicing and also the correct application of a desired slicing regime in a rigorous way.