As a debugging aid, there are many useful tools available for the programmer.
Most tools are implemented for the simplest types of slicing approach, typically
static slicing and syntax-preserving approach.
The most widely known program slicing tool is the Wisconsin Program Slicing Tool
1. This
toolkit can perform backward and forward slicing on C/C++ program. This project
was under research at University of Wisconsin, Madison for non-profit purposes
from 1996 to 2000, and is no longer being distributed. However, the Wisconsin
Slicing technology is available in a commercial product, named CodeSurfer
2,
which provides user-friendly dependence graph for exploring backward and
forward slice for each assignments.
Unravel3
is another widely known tool. This tool can only perform simple static backward
slicing on ANSI C program, and is very easy to use.
Indus4 is
a project at Kansas State University, which provides collections of program
analysis and transformation on Java programs. Indus contains many useful
module, including Program Static Analysis and Java Program Slicer. Kaveri is an
Eclipse plug-in front-end for the Indus Java slicer. It utilizes the Indus program
slicer to calculate slices of Java programs and then displays the results visually in
the editor. This application provides static forward and backward slicing only on
a Java-written program. It also can handle object orientation and concurrent
program.