Systematic Change of Data Representation: program Manipulations and a Case Study

摘要

We present a set of semantics-based program manipulation techniques to asist in restructuring software encapsulation boundaries and making systmeatic changes to data representatios. These techniques adapt abstraction structure and data representatios without alterng program functionality. The techniques are intended to be embodied in source-level analysis and manipulation tools used interactively by programmers, rather than in fullly automatic tools and compilers. The approach involves combinin techniques for adapting and specializing encapsulated data types and for eliminating redundant operations that are distributed among multiple methods in a class with techniques for cloning classes to facilitate specialization and for moving computation across class boundaries. The combined set of technique is intended to facilitate revision of structural design decisins such as the design of a class hierarchy or an internal component interface. The paper introduces new techniques, provides soundness proofs, and gives details of case study involivng production Java code.