What is Program Slicing?

In software applications, program slicing is a method of identifying the core elements of a software program and gently extracting them from the more complicated code that allows the program to function. The process of program slicing is especially important to software engineering efforts, as it allows the software engineer to find the way through complicated strings of code in order to access the source code that actually drives the application. Being able to extract these subprograms and view the source code makes it possible to identify a wide range of potential bugs and thus make the software run with more efficiency. It is not unusual for code to be intentionally complicated. One of the main reasons for this action is that the more complicated portions of the code help to protect the source code from corruption by viruses and hacking attempts. Usually, a programmer will add a great deal of extra code that essentially makes it necessary to go through a number of extra steps to ...  more

In computer programming, program slicing is the computation of a program slice. The program slice consists of the parts of a program that may affect the values computed at some point of interest, referred to as a slicing criterion. Program slicing can be used in debugging to locate source of errors more easily. Other applications of slicing include software maintenance, optimization, program analysis, and information flow control.  more