Aiding program comprehension by static and dynamic feature analysis

Abstract

Understanding a system's implementation without prior knowledge is a hard task for reengineers in general. However, some degree of automatic aid is possible. The authors present a technique for building a mapping between the system's externally visible behavior and the relevant parts of the source code. The technique combines dynamic and static analyses to rapidly focus on the system's parts urgently required for a goal-directed process of program understanding.