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A System for Generating Reverse Engineering Tools: A Case Study of Software Modularisation

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Abstract

The paper presents a case study in the development of software modularisation tools. The tools are produced by using a system for developing code analysers that uses a database to store both a no-loss fine-grained intermediate representation and the analyses' results. The analysers are automatically generated from a high-level specification of the desired analyses expressed in a domain-oriented language. We use a program intermediate representation, called F(p), as the user-visible data base conceptual model. Analysers are specified in a declarative language, called F(p) − ℓ, which allows the specification of an analysis in the form of a traversal of an algebraic expression, with accesses to, and stores of, the database information the algebraic expression indexes. A foreign language interface allows the analysers to be embedded into C programs. This is useful, for example, to implement the user interface of an analyser or to facilitate interoperation of the generated analysers with pre-existing tools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, University of Sannio, Palazzo Bosco Lucarelli, Piazza Roma, 82100, Benevento, Italy

    Gerardo Canfora & Andrea De lucia

  2. Department of “Informatica e Sistemistica”, University of Naples “Federico II”, via Claudio 21, 80125, Naples, Italy

    Giuseppe A. Di Lucca

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  1. Gerardo Canfora
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  2. Andrea De lucia
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  3. Giuseppe A. Di Lucca
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Canfora, G., De lucia, A. & Di Lucca, G.A. A System for Generating Reverse Engineering Tools: A Case Study of Software Modularisation. Automated Software Engineering 6, 233–263 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008704710421

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