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The Surgeon's Assistant

Published

Author(s)

K Gallagher, D Wallace, Frederick E. Boland Jr., D W. Binkley, James R. Lyle

Abstract

The Surgeon's Assistant is a tool for the maintainers of ANSI C programs. Using the Surgeon's Assistant, a software maintainer (a surgeon) can isolate program components for change; assess the impact of contemplated changes on components that are to remain unchanged; design, code and test the modifications so that all effects have no impact on the unchanging part. The software surgery process has four parts: build collections of decompositions using a preprocessor; combine and inspect decompositions using a graphical interface; edit the source using extensions to emacs; and compile and test within the Unix environment.
Citation
Journal of Software Maintenance

Keywords

decomposition slicing, program slicing, regression testing, software maintenance, software tools, Surgeon's Assistant

Citation

Gallagher, K. , Wallace, D. , Boland, F. , Binkley, D. and Lyle, J. (1998), The Surgeon's Assistant, Journal of Software Maintenance (Accessed July 18, 2024)

Issues

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Created April 14, 1998, Updated February 17, 2017