An overview of program slicing

1. Introduction Program slicing is a technique for simplifying programs by focusing on selected aspects of semantics. The process of slicing deletes those parts of the program which can be determined to have no effect upon the semantics of interest. Slicing has applications in testing and debugging, re−engineering, program comprehension and software measurement. For example, in debugging, there is little point in the (human) debugger analysing sections of the source code which cannot have caused the bug. Slicing avoids this by removing these parts of the program, focusing attention on those parts of the program which may contain a fault.