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Formalising Behaviour Preserving Program Transformations

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Graph Transformation (ICGT 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2505))

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Abstract

The notion of refactoring —transforming the source-code of an object-oriented program without changing its external behaviour— has increased the need for a precise definition of refactorings and their properties. This paper introduces a graph representation of those aspects of the source code that should be preserved by a refactoring, and graph rewriting rules as a formal specification for the refactoring transformations themselves. To this aim, we use type graphs, forbidden subgraphs, embedding mechansims, negative application conditions and controlled graph rewriting. We show that it is feasible to reason about the effect of refactorings on object-oriented programs independently of the programming language being used. This is crucial for the next generation of refactoring tools.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050, Brussel, Belgium

    Tom Mens

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Universiteit Antwerpen, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Serge Demeyer & Dirk Janssens

Authors
  1. Tom Mens
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  2. Serge Demeyer
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  3. Dirk Janssens
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Corso Italia 40, 56125, Pisa, Italy

    Andrea Corradini

  2. Computer Science Department, Technical University of Berlin, Franklinstraße 28/29, 10587, Berlin, Germany

    Hartmut Ehrig

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Bremen, Bibliothekstraße 1, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Hans -Jörg Kreowski

  4. Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333, CA Leiden, The Netherlands

    Grzegorz Rozenberg

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Mens, T., Demeyer, S., Janssens, D. (2002). Formalising Behaviour Preserving Program Transformations. In: Corradini, A., Ehrig, H., Kreowski, H.J., Rozenberg, G. (eds) Graph Transformation. ICGT 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2505. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45832-8_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45832-8_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44310-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45832-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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