Code inspection approaches for program visualization

• Author(s): Cruz, Daniela ; Berón, Mario ; Henriques, Pedro ; Pereira, Maria João
• Date: 2009
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/1202
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Code inspection; Code analysis; Visualization; Program comprehension
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

The aim of this paper is to show the approaches involved in the implementation of two tools of PCVIA project that can be used for Program Comprehension. Both tools use known compiler techniques to inspect code in order to visualize and understand programs’ execution but one of them modifies the source code and the other not. In the non-invasive approach, we convert the source program into an internal decorated (or attributed) abstract syntax tree and then we visualize the structure traversing it, and applying visualization rules at each node according to a pre-defined rule-base. No changes are made in the source code, and the execution is simulated. In the invasive approach, we traverse the source program and instrument it with inspection functions. Those functions, also known as inspectors, provide information about the function-call flow and data usage at runtime (during the actual program execution). This information is collected and gathered in an information repository that is then displayed in a suitable form for navigation. These two different approaches are used respectively by Alma (generic program animation system) and CEAR (C Rooting Algorithm Visualization tool). For each tool several examples of visualization are shown in order to discuss the information that is included in the visualizations, visualization types and the use of Program Animation for Program Comprehension.