A Hypothetical Monologue Illustrating the Knowledge Underlying Program Analysis

Abstract

Automated Program Analysis is the process of discovering decompositions of a system into sub-units such that the behavior of the whole program can be inferred from the behavior of its parts. Analysis can be employed to increase the explanatory power of a program understanding system. We identify several techniques which are useful for automated program analysis. Chief among these is the identification and classification of the macro-scale units of programming knowledge which are characteristic of the problem domain. We call these plans. This paper presents a summary of how plans can be used in program analysis in the form of a hypothetical monologue. We also show a small catalogue of plans which are characteristic of AI programming. Finally, we present some techniques which facilitate plan recognition.