Automated support for development, maintenance, and testing in the presence of implicit flow control

Although object-oriented languages can improve programming practices, their characteristics may introduce new problems for software engineers. One important problem is the presence of implicit control flow caused by exception handling and polymorphism. Implicit control flow causes complex interactions, and can thus complicate software-engineering tasks. To address this problem, we present a systematic and structured approach, for supporting these tasks, based on the static and dynamic analyses of constructs that cause implicit control flow. Our approach provides software engineers with information for supporting and guiding development and maintenance tasks. We also present empirical results to illustrate the potential usefulness of our approach. Our studies show that, for the subjects considered, complex implicit control flow is always present and is generally not adequately exercised.