Software Reconnaissance is a technique for locating features in code. It is a process inspired by frustrated maintainers of old code. The University of West Florida has developed a tool called RECON written for this purpose.

In this study, the current version of the toolset (RECON3) is applied to the text editor VIM, a clone of the popular Unix editor VI. Three features of the program are successfully located using the RECON3 tools.

While none of the code is located without some thought and study on the part of the software engineer, code is discovered through development of effective test cases and by surveying trace files generated by running instrumented target programs.

This study is unique in that the author is a graduate student using RECON3 for the first time, and not a professional software engineer. As a result, the reader gets an accounting of exactly what it takes to download this tool and use it.

The RECON3 toolset was found to be effective and useful for Software Reconnaissance.

Report prepared as part of work in the course CEN 6015, Software Engineering Project, November 6, 2002.

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For further information contact Norman Wilde