Forward computation of dynamic program slices

Abstract

A dynamic program slice is an executable part of the program whose behavior is identical, for the same program input, to that of the original program with respect to a variable(s) of interest at some execution position. It has been shown that dynamic slicing is useful for the purpose of debugging, testing and software maintenance. The existing methods of dynamic slice computation are based on “backward” analysis, i.e., after the execution trace of the program is first recorded, the dynamic slice algorithm traces backwards the execution trace to derive dynamic dependence relations that are then used to compute dynamic slices. For many programs, during their execution extremely high volume of information may be recorded that may prevent accurate dynamic slice computation. In this paper we present a novel approach of dynamic slice computation, referred to as forward approach of dynamic slice computation. In this method, dynamic slices are computed during program execution without major recording of the execution trace. The major advantage of the forward approach is that space complexity is bounded as opposed to the backward methods of slice computation.