On Log Analysis and Stack Trace Use to Improve Program Slicing

Program slicing is a common technique to help reconstruct the path of execution a program has taken. It is beneficial for assisting developers in debugging their programs, but its usefulness depends on the slice accuracy that can be achieved, which is limited by the sources of information used in building the slice. In this paper, we demonstrate that two sources of information, namely program logs, and stack traces, previously used in isolation to build program slices, can be combined to build a program slicer capable of handling more scenarios than either method individually. We also demonstrate a sample application of our proposed slicing approach by showing how our slicer can deduce integer inputs that will recreate the detected error’s execution path.