US 4,730,315 AGranted

Diagrammatic method of testing program

AssigneeHitachi, Ltd.

InventorsKazumasa Saito, Hiroyuki Maezawa

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Abstract

A diagrammatic method is disclosed of testing a program in a data processing system equipped with a display terminal for interactive operations. Program specification inputs are given in a diagrammatic form through interactive operations and are edited into diagrammatic specifications. Those diagrammatic specifications are then translated into a source program described in, for example, FORTRAN, in which are interspersed comment statements each of which indicates a diagrammatic specification corresponding to the associated statement of the source program. In the course of a test the diagrammatic specification corresponding to a process under execution is retrieved and displayed according to a comment statement, and the portions corresponding to executed operations are displayed distinctively, for example, in a special color, while the resultant values of variables are also displayed.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A program testing method performed in a data processing system having processing means, memory means, inputting means and outputting means, comprising the steps of:

storing in said memory means data representing diagrammatic specifications of a program and a corresponding series of program statements having correspondence information associated therewith which indicates the correspondence of said program statements to respective portions of said diagrammatic specifications;
starting execution of said series of program statements;
identifying during said execution a portion of said diagrammatic specifications corresponding to a program statement in a path of said execution by referring to said correspondence information;
and
outputting during said execution at least part of said data representing diagrammatic specifications with said identified portion expressed distinctively, thereby showing the execution state of said series of program statements on said diagrammatic specifications.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.