Program Slicing and Source Code Analysis: Methods and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Software and programming languages’ complexity has been increasing steadily since the inception of the first computer programs and languages. To handle this increase in complexity, many software analysis techniques, such as program slicing, have been developed and included in the development process, for example, in IDEs, debuggers, or compilers.

Program slicing can identify which statements may affect (or be affected by) a given point in the program, the so-called slicing criterion. Even though program slicing was initially designed for debugging (where the slice includes the statements relevant to isolate and fix a bug), currently, the applications of program slicing range from program parallelization and clone detection to neural network optimization and pre-processing for other analyses in which the input size must be minimized due to a high time complexity.

This Special Issue aims to present advancements in source code analysis, synthesis, and transformation; with special emphasis (but not limited to) program slicing. Papers presenting novel techniques and their applications, novel implementations or algorithms, and any advancement in static or dynamic analysis that is relevant to source code analysis or program slicing, e.g., control dependence, System Dependence Graph, flow dependence, dicing, chopping, dependence analyses, formal aspects, usages of program slicing, tools, etc.

Dr. Josep Silva
Dr. Carlos Galindo
Guest Editors

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