An Evaluation of Slicing Algorithms for Concurrent Programs

Program slicing is a program-reduction technique for extracting statements that may influence other statements. While there exist efficient algorithms to slice sequential programs precisely, there are only two algorithms for precise slicing of concurrent interprocedural programs with recursive procedures. We implemented both algorithms for Java, applied several new optimizations and examined their precision and runtime behavior. We compared these results with two further algorithms which trade precision for speed. We show that one algorithm may produce incorrect slices and that precise slicing of concurrent programs in general is very expensive in terms of needed computation time.