A STANDARD REPRESENTATION OF IMPERATIVE LANGUAGE PROGRAMS FOR DATA-COLLECTION AND SOFTWARE MEASURES SPECIFICATION

Software measures and software tools are often defined in terms of a particular, limited programming language. As a result, implementing tools and measures so that they can be applied to 'real' programs in 'real' programming languages is difficult. Further, independent evaluation and comparison of measures and tools is difficult. We propose a standard representation of imperative language programs that is independent of the syntax of any particular programming language, and that supports the definition of a wide range of tools and measures. Additionally, the standard representation masks the actual program semantics. Thus the standard representation provides a vehicle by which large volumes of industrial software can be made available to researchers while protecting the proprietary nature of the programs.