On Extraction of Declarative Semantics of Procedural Programs
On Extraction of Declarative Semantics of Procedural Programs

Summary/Abstract: Programs contain precise low-level instructions on performing computational processes, but source code itself rarely provides a high-level insight of the intentions of the programmer. In cases where documentation is missing or incomplete, maintenance of a software system can be extremely challenging. Reverse engineering is the process of inferring high-level features of the program semantics, including architecture, domain-specific concepts, and the functional and logical relations between them. In the present paper we explore methods for extracting declarative properties of programs that are not necessarily written in a declarative style by application of formal approaches to program semantics. We examine methods and techniques based on axiomatic-style and denotational-style semantics and highlight their advantages and disadvantages with respect to practical program extraction.

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