Precise documentation of well-structured programs

Author

Parnas, David Lorge ; Madey, Jan ; Iglewski, Michal

Author_Institution

Telecommun. Res. Inst., McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ont., Canada

Volume

20

Issue

12

fYear

1994

fDate

12/1/1994 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

948

Lastpage

976

Abstract

Describes a new form of program documentation that is precise, systematic and readable. This documentation comprises a set of displays supplemented by a lexicon and an index. Each display presents a program fragment in such a way that its correctness can be examined without looking at any other display. Each display has three parts: (1) the specification of the program presented in the display, (2) the program itself, and (3) the specifications of programs invoked by this program. The displays are intended to be used by software engineers as a reference document during inspection and maintenance. This paper also introduces a specification technique that is a refinement of H.D. Mills´s (1975) functional approach to program documentation and verification; programs are specified and described in tabular form

Keywords

formal specification; program verification; software maintenance; structured programming; system documentation; displays; functional approach; index; lexicon; precise documentation; program correctness; program documentation; program fragments; program verification; reference document; software engineering; software inspection; software maintenance; specification; tabular form; well-structured programs; Councils; Displays; Documentation; Heart; Helium; Humans; Informatics; Inspection; Programming profession; Software maintenance;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0098-5589

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/32.368133

Filename

368133