Partial Slices in Program Testing

Abstract

Program slicing is widely used as an aid in program analysis. In several cases, it is observed that the static slices contain a large number of program statements. Due to this increased size of the static slice, they are of little use in many practical applications. Moreover, the static slices may be less precise compared to dynamic slices. Partial slicing is suggested as a method for program testing in order to eliminate the disadvantages of static slicing. In partial slices, in addition to the static slicing criterion, the user has to provide the program point. Program point specifies the program statement up to which the static slicing is to be performed. The partial slices produced in this manner combines both static and program point information. This in turn is analyzed to verify the constraints and conditions in the slices to remove any obscurity in the program testing process. In this work we propose a partial slicing approach, which can be applied in program testing. An appealing aspect of this work is that, using partial slicing the whole program testing process may be made more direct and effective. Some illustrations which highlight the easiness of the proposed partial slicing are provided to affirm the significance of this work.