1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of indicating the necessity of supplementary change of a program when the program has been partially changed in a computer system designed to support program changes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Each of the statements (declaration statements and procedure statements) in a program is closely related to one or more other statements, and a change in one statement may therefore lead, to a certain change in several other statements that are related to the first statement. However, in general it is not easy to specify all of the parts of a program that should be derivatively changed nor to specify the contents of such a change. Conventionally, a computer system designed to support such a task is known in which the syntax of a program, i.e., the procedure statements in the program and the relationship between the data which is used by the program are analyzed and the result of analysis is output as a document. A user who checks this document is capable of searching for the data or statements that need to be changed in connection with any change effected in a certain statement or data. As a way of providing an improved version of this document, a system for tracing and displaying interactively related statements or data in response to designation of a statement or data by the user without outputting the analysis result as a document is also known.
However, these known systems can only determine the intention of the respective statements or data in a program within a range defined by the relevant program language itself, and fail to capture the intention of the programmer which is given in that programming. In consequence, the user can detect the data and/or statements that are related to the designated data or statement but cannot be alerted to the fact that a change is necessary nor can he be informed what kind of change is necessary in cases where change is required. It is therefore difficult for the user to change all the parts that need to be changed without error even when such support systems are used.