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International Symposium on Formal Methods

FM 2006: FM 2006: Formal Methods pp 492–507Cite as

Changing Programs Correctly: Refactoring with Specifications

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4085))

Abstract

Refactorings change the internal structure of code without changing its external behavior. For non-trivial refactorings, the preservation of external behavior depends on semantic properties of the program that are difficult to check automatically before the refactoring is applied. Therefore, existing refactoring tools either do not support non-trivial refactorings at all or force programmers to rely on (typically incomplete) test suites to check their refactorings.

The technique presented in the paper allows one to show the preservation of external behavior even for complex refactorings. For a given refactoring, we prove once and for all that the refactoring is an equivalence transformation, provided that the refactored program satisfies certain semantic correctness conditions. These conditions can be added automatically as assertions to the refactored program and checked at runtime or verified statically. Our technique allows tools to apply even complex refactorings safely, and refactorings automatically improve program documentation by generating assertions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zürich,  

    Fabian Bannwart & Peter Müller

Authors
  1. Fabian Bannwart
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  2. Peter Müller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas at Austin,  

    Jayadev Misra

  2. Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität, München,  

    Tobias Nipkow

  3. Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, L8S 4K1, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Emil Sekerinski

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bannwart, F., Müller, P. (2006). Changing Programs Correctly: Refactoring with Specifications. In: Misra, J., Nipkow, T., Sekerinski, E. (eds) FM 2006: Formal Methods. FM 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4085. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11813040_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11813040_33

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-37215-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-37216-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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