Year: 2003
Type: conference-paper
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.
Authors: M. Harman, Lin Hu, R. Hierons, M. Munro, Xingyuan Zhang, J.J. Dolado, M.C. Otero, J. Wegener
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2140382894