Pigs from sausages?  Reengineering from assembler to C via fermaT transformations

Date

2004-01-01

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

0167-6423

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Abstract

Description

Software reengineering has been described as being "about as easy as reconstructing a pig from a sausage". But the development of program transformation theory, as embodied in the FermaT Transformation System, has made this miraculous feat into a practical possibility. This paper describes the theory behind the FermaT system and describes a recent migration project in which over 544,000 lines of assembler were transformed into efficient and maintainable structured C code. The FermaT Transformation System is now being used by Software Migrations Ltd to carry out major international software migration projects. This was a result of an EPSRC-funded project (GR/R56099).

Keywords

RAE 2008, UoA 23 Computer Science and Informatics

Citation

Ward, M. (2004) Pigs from sausages? Reengineering from assembler to C via FermaT transformations. Science of Computer Programming, 52(1-3), pp.213-255.

Rights

Research Institute