Hitachi, Ltd.

Yoshihiko Futamura

Masakazu Kobayashi

Hiroyuki Maezawa

Kazumasa Saito

Kenroku Nogi

A program translation method for translating a first program including at least a conditional branch step into a second program through a partial computation. Whether or not a condition expression included in the first program is satisfied is judged depending on known information. If such judgement can not be made, the routine of each branch destination of the condition expression is subjected to a partial computation based on the known information and additional information indicating the branch condition of the condition expression. When the routine at the branch destination is a non-primitive function, prior to the partial computation of the routine at the branch destination, a unique name is assigned to a result of the partial computation such that the name is referenced at an intermediate point of the partial computation.

Program translation based on generalized partial computation

According to the present invention, using a display terminal for conversation, a module structure diagram (schemata expressive of the connectional relations among respective program modules) is created, and a processing flow diagram (a kind of processing flow chart), an internal data definition diagram (schemata for specifying the formats etc. of data for use in processes) and an interface data definition diagram (schemata for specifying the formats etc. of arguments, common data between the modules, etc.) are created for each module, the created contents being stored in a memory. Further, the schematic information items of the module structure diagram, processing flow diagram, internal data definition diagram and interface data definition diagram are read out from the memory for each module and have stereotyped sentences and symbols added thereto, to generate the individual sentences of a source program. These sentences are edited according to the rules of a language, to complete the source program. If necessary, the various diagrams are printed out and utilized as program specifications.

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Hachioji, Japan

Yoshihiko Futamura