Web structures: a tool for representing and manipulating programs

The authors introduce web structures and their transformations and develop their theory in the framework of category theory. Once a program has been represented as a web structure, software tools, such as a high-level data flow analyzer or other general program transformers, can be written as sets of web structure production rules. An implementation of web structure transformations is in progress. The mathematical theory of web structure transformations allows form proofs of properties both at the metatheoretical and theoretical levels