Identifying the semantic and textual differences between two versions of a program

Text-based file comparators (<italic>e.g.</italic>, the Unix utility <italic>diff</italic>), are very general tools that can be applied to arbitrary files. However, using such tools to compare <italic>programs</italic> can be unsatisfactory because their <italic>only</italic> notion of change is based on program <italic>text</italic> rather than program <italic>behavior</italic>. This paper describes a technique for comparing two versions of a program, determining which program components represents changes, and classifying each changed component as representing either a <italic>semantic</italic> or a <italic>textual</italic> change.

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