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An approach to program understanding by natural language understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 1999

LETHA H. ETZKORN ,
LISA L. BOWEN  and
CARL G. DAVIS
LETHA H. ETZKORN
Affiliation:
Computer Science Department, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA; e-mail: letzkorn@cs.uah.edu, lbowen@cs.uah.edu, cdavis@cs.uah.edu
LISA L. BOWEN
Affiliation:
Computer Science Department, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA; e-mail: letzkorn@cs.uah.edu, lbowen@cs.uah.edu, cdavis@cs.uah.edu
CARL G. DAVIS
Affiliation:
Computer Science Department, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA; e-mail: letzkorn@cs.uah.edu, lbowen@cs.uah.edu, cdavis@cs.uah.edu
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Abstract

An automated tool to assist in the understanding of legacy code components can be useful both in the areas of software reuse and software maintenance. Most previous work in this area has concentrated on functionally-oriented code. Whereas object-oriented code has been shown to be inherently more reusable than functionally-oriented code, in many cases the eventual reuse of the object-oriented code was not considered during development. A knowledge-based, natural language processing approach to the automated understanding of object-oriented code as an aid to the reuse of object-oriented code is described. A system, called the PATRicia system (Program Analysis Tool for Reuse) that implements the approach is examined. The natural language processing/information extraction system that comprises a large part of the PATRicia system is discussed and the knowledge-base of the PATRicia system, in the form of conceptual graphs, is described. Reports provided by natural language-generation in the PATRicia system are described.

Type
Research Article
Information
Natural Language Engineering , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 219 - 236
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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