Summary: To appear in IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis '98), October 1998.
Traversal­based Visualization of Data Structures #
Jeffrey L. Korn
Andrew W. Appel
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University +
July 16, 1998
Abstract
Algorithm animation systems and graphical debuggers perform the
task of translating program state into visual representations. While
algorithm animations typically rely on user augmented source code
to produce visualizations, debuggers make use of symbolic infor­
mation in the target program. As a result, visualizations produced
by debuggers often lack important semantic content, making them
inferior to algorithm animation systems. This paper presents a
method to provide higher­level, more informative visualizations in
a debugger using a technique called traversal­based visualization.
The debugger traverses a data structure using a set of user­supplied
patterns to identify parts of the data structure to be drawn a similar
way. A declarative language is used to specify the patterns and the
actions to take when the patterns are encountered. Alternatively,

Source: Appel, Andrew W. - Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences