Special issue on Source code analysis and manipulation

The source code is the reference repository of knowledge, used during program comprehension and modification. SCAM, the IEEE Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, brings together researchers and practitioners whose work revolves around the source code, its automatic or semi-automatic analysis, and its transformation.This special issue features extended versions of the best papers presented during SCAM 2005 in Budapest. The two main topics of the selected papers are slicing and program transformations. These are quite representative of the mixture of subjects that are dealt with in this workshop and that range from theoretical properties of code analysis techniques, such as slicing, to practical applications of transformation and restructuring methods.