An Algorithm for Keyword Search on an Execution Path

This paper presents a code-search method, which includes an algorithm of keyword code-search and a prototype implementation. In this paper, a query is a set of keywords and a search result is a set of execution paths fulfilling the query, that is, each of the execution paths includes all of the keywords. Here, an execution path represents one of all levels of method calls of all possible dynamic dispatches in an OO program; thus, many execution paths can be generated even from a small program. The algorithm works on a data structure named an And/Or/Call graph, which is a compact representation of execution paths. The prototype implementation searches names of methods or types, or words in string literals from Java source code.