For his master's thesis on , Florian Sihler received the award for the best master's degree in the field of computer science at 午夜探花. The award will be presented at the "Langer Abend der Wissenschaft" on June 21, 2024.
In his work, Florian analyzes the R programming language to identify lesser and more frequently used features. Furthermore, he creates a dataflow analysis procedure for the R programming language as a part of a new tool called , providing more information on how variable definitions, uses, and function calls in the program relate to each other. Based on the extracted dataflow information, flowR can slice the program for a given variable, reducing it to the parts relevant to a specific calculation. Finally, Florian evaluates flowR on real-world R code, uncovering limitations and potential future work.
Currently, Florian extends on this work in his ongoing PhD at the institute of Software Engineering and Programming Languages.