Title :
Knowledge-based program analysis
Author :
Harandi, Mehdi T. ; Ning, J.Q.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Illinois Univ., Urbana, IL, USA
Abstract :
Automatic program analysis is regarded here as both the mechanized process of understanding high-level concepts from program text and the use of those concepts to guide program maintenance. A knowledge-based program analysis tool called PAT, which realizes this concept, is described. PAT uses an object-oriented framework to represent programming concepts and a heuristic-based concept-recognition mechanism to derive high-level functional concepts from the source code. As an example, a segment of a much larger program written in a Pascal-like language is analyzed using PAT.<>
Keywords :
knowledge based systems; object-oriented programming; program diagnostics; software tools; PAT; heuristic-based concept-recognition mechanism; high-level concepts; knowledge-based program analysis tool; object-oriented framework; program maintenance; program text; programming concepts; source code; Abstracts; Cognitive science; Documentation; Functional programming; Humans; Object oriented modeling; Object oriented programming; Petri nets; Programming profession; Tree graphs;
Journal_Title :
Software, IEEE
