A survey of empirical results on program slicing

A program slice extracts a semantically meaningful portion of a program, based upon a User-selected slicing criterion. As the study of program slicing has matured, a growing body of empirical data has been gathered on the size of slices, slicing tools and techniques, the applications of slicing, and the beneficial psycho chological effects of slices on the programmers who use them. Empirical work on these topics is surveyed, highlighting trends and areas where additional empirical investigation is desirable, either because of contradictory findings or scarcity of results in the existing body of empirical knowledge.