Forward slicing of multi-paradigm declarative programs based on partial evaluation

Abstract

Program slicing has been mainly studied in the context of imperative languages, where it has been applied to many software engineering tasks, like program understanding, maintenance, debugging, testing, code reuse, etc. This paper introduces the first forward slicing technique for multi-paradigm declarative programs. In particular, we show how program slicing can be defined in terms of online partial evaluation. Our approach clarifies the relation between both methodologies and provides a simple way to develop program slicing tools from existing partial evaluators. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.