Seminar Program Analysis and Transformation Program Slicing and Sliding for Refactoring

Slicing is an approach to divide a program into chunks that share a common property, like their contribution to the result of a calculation. Slicing can be used to leverage the power of refactoring tools by providing a deeper understanding of the code. For example, the Extract Method refactoring used to extract a series of statements can—with the aid of a slicing algorithm—be enhanced to allow the extraction of non-contiguous statements. This paper summarizes Ran Ettinger’s thesis about “Refactoring via Program Slicing and Sliding”, where he introduces the notion of sliding, a visualization of the slicing procedure based on transparent overhead-projector slides. I also show how several well-known refactorings can benefit from a slicing algorithm.