Is it possible to convert code into a logical graph?

Question

Is it possible to convert code into a logical graph?

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EDIT:

What I am thinking is that math is absolute. We can judge whether it is right or wrong for sure. But for code, there is something other than the logic. What I want to do is remove that 'something' to keep the logic there only.

Answer 1

At least the inverse is possible. When programming Siemen's PLCs one of the more common programming forms is "Ladder Logic", where you program graphically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic

Answer 2

Or like reverse engineered UML, with class and sequence diagrams?

Not as valuable as the code itself, IMO. Once you reach a meaningful degree of complexity it's impossible to take in an entire diagram or graph. And the problems that can be graphed effectively aren't worth the effort.

No debuggers or unit tests for graphical representations of any kind.

The value of pictures and design is to reach a point where you understand the problem well enough to code. But once you reach that point, I'd argue that the marginal utility of making them equivalent to engineering drawings isn't worth the effort.

Answer 3

it's possible. flowcharts are logical graphs and could easily be generated by a computer. Every code structure has a corresponding flowchart structure.

quick google brought up: Code Visual to Flowchart

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as far as inverse, flowcharts are much too broad to convert to code. There are graphical programming languages though. for instance NI's labView fpga is all graphical programming which can then be converted into VHDL.

Answer 4

Not sure this is exactly what you mean, but static analysers like clang parse code, determine all possible branches the code could take, and check for errors. For example, given the code..

1. if(somefunction()){
2.    this_will_break();
3. } else {
4.     if(anotherfunction()){
5.         printf("%i", str(something));
6.     }
7.     print("this is fine");
8. }

You will get output along the lines:

Line 1. Taking true branch.
Line 1. Error: Function this_will_break is not defined
Line 4. Taking true branch.
Line 5. Warning: Function passed incompatible type

You could potentially graph these paths, but I don't see why you would want to (it wouldn't really show anything)

Another possibly similar idea is Gprof2Dot, which takes profiling data, and draws a hierarchal Graphviz chart showing how long each function takes to run, which function called it and so on.

A final thing springs to mind, which is nodal based applications like Shake, or Quartz Composer - ways of "programming visually", representing code like Add(Blur(MyImage), Blur(AlphaChannel)) as:

[MyImage]--->[Blur]----\/
                      [Add]
                       /\
[AlphaChannel]----------

Those aren't logical graphs, but they are ways of visually representing code, which might possibly give you some ideas.. maybe.. unless I'm totally misunderstanding..