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Identifying syntactic differences between two programs

The work

AuthorsWuu Yang
Editors
Typearticle
Year1991
Citekeyyang1991identifying

Where it appeared

Published inSoftware Practice and Experience
PublisherWiley
Volume21
Issue7
Pages739--755

Identifiers

DOI10.1002/spe.4380210706
OpenAlexW2049461910

Access

Landing pagehttps://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380210706

From OpenAlex, which stores abstracts as an index of words and their positions: what is shown is rebuilt from that, and reads fluently whether or not it is what the author wrote.

Abstract

Abstract Programmers frequently face the need to identify the differences between two programs, usually two different versions of a program. Text‐based tools such as the UNIXr̀ utility diff often produce unsatisfactory comparisons because they cannot accurately pinpoint the differences and because they sometimes produce irrelevant differences. Since programs have a rigid syntactic structure as described by the grammar of the programming language in which they are written, we develop a comparison algorithm that exploits knowledge of the grammar. The algorithm, which is based on a dynamic programming scheme, can point out the differences between two programs more accurately than previous text comparison tools. Finally, the two programs are pretty‐printed ‘synchronously’ with the differences highlighted so that the differences are easily identified.

How it got here

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Added2026-10-26 11:41 UTC
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Cite it as

@article{yang1991identifying,
  title        = {Identifying syntactic differences between two programs},
  author       = {Wuu Yang},
  year         = {1991},
  journal      = {Software Practice and Experience},
  publisher    = {Wiley},
  volume       = {21},
  number       = {7},
  pages        = {739--755},
  doi          = {10.1002/spe.4380210706},
}

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