Flow analysis to detect blocked statements

Abstract

In the context of software quality assessment, the paper proposes two new kinds of data which can be extracted from source code. The first, definitely blocked statements, can never be executed because preceding code prevents the execution of the program. The other data, called possibly blocked statements, may be blocked by blocking code. The paper presents original flow equations to compute definitely and possibly blocked statements in source code. The experimental context is described and results are shown and discussed. Suggestions for further research are also presented.