Modernization of Legacy Software: Re-engineering Low-Level Code

The proposal describes a semi-automatic tool translating source code implemented in mixed low-level programming languages for obsolete hardware platforms into more easily understandable source code implemented in modern high-level programming languages for modern hardware platforms by (1) parsing the textual representation of the source code into a syntax tree, (2) translating the syntax tree into a control- and data-flow graph, (3) removing accidential implementation details from the control- and data-flow representation, (4) recognizing concepts, which are defined by software engineers using the notations of the involved programming languages, in the resulting control- and data-flow graph by performing graph matching, (5) translating the source syntax tree into a target syntax tree by abstracting the recognized concepts, reimplementing them in the target language, and translating the remainder of the source code using straightforward syntactic transformation rules, and (6) formatting the target syntax tree into a textural reprentation. The proposed phase I work consists of initial research laying the foundations to develop such an automated translation tool. It will build upon an existing program analysis and transformation system infrastructure.