Abstract

Computer programmers break apart large programs into smaller coherent pieces. Each of these pieces: func-tions, subroutines, modules, or abstract datatypes, is usually a contiguous piece of program text. The experi-ment reported here shows that programmers also rou-tinely break programs into one kind of coherent piece which is not coniguous. When debugging unfamiliar pro-grams programmers use program pieces called slices which are sets of statements related by their flow of data. The statements in a slice are not necessarily textually contiguous, but may be scattered through a program.

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