Last updated on Monday, October 06, 2025
@article{Mens05JSME,
author = {Tom Mens and Niels Van Eetvelde and Serge Demeyer and
Dirk Janssens},
journal = {International Journal on Software Maintenance:
Research and Practice},
month = jul,
note = {SCI impact factor 0.457, ranked 60 / 79},
number = {4},
pages = {247-276},
publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons},
title = {Formalizing Refactorings with Graph Transformations},
volume = {15},
year = {2005},
abstract = {The widespread interest in refactoring - transforming
the source-code of an object-oriented program without
changing its external behaviour - has increased the
need for a precise definition of refactoring
transformations and their properties. In this paper
we explore the use of graph rewriting for specifying
refactorings and their effect on programs. We
introduce a graph representation for programs and
show how two representative refactorings can be
expressed by graph productions. Then we demonstrate
that it is possible to prove that refactorings
preserve certain program properties, and that graph
rewriting is a suitable formalism for such proofs.},
annote = {internationaljournal},
doi = {10.1002/smr.316},
}