Improving program comprehension by combining code understanding with comment understanding

Existing source code-based program comprehension approaches analyze either the code itself or the comments/identifiers but not both. In this research, we combine code understanding with comment and identifier understanding. This synergistic approach allows much deeper understanding of source code than is possible using either code or comments/identifiers alone. Our approach also allows comparing comments to their associated code to see whether they match or belong to the code. Our combined approach implements both our heuristic code understanding and the comment/identifier understanding within the same knowledge base inferencing engine. This inferencing engine is the same used by an earlier well tested, mature comment/identifier-based program understanding approach.