Using Attributed Flow Graph Parsing to Recognize Clichés in Programs

This paper presents a graph parsing approach to recognizing common stereotypical computational structures called clich es in com puter programs Recognition is a powerful technique for e ciently recon structing useful design information from existing software We use a ow graph formalism which is closely related to hypergraph formalisms to represent programs and clich es and we use attributed ow graph parsing to automate recognition The formalism includes mechanisms for toler ating variations in programs due to structure sharing a common opti mization in which a structural component is used to play more than one functional role The formalism has also been designed to capture aggre gation relationships on graph edges which is used to encode aggregate data structure clich es and the abstract operations on them A chart pars ing algorithm is used to solve the problem of determining which clich es in a given clich e library are in a given program