Reengineering of C/C++ Programs using Generic Components

Complex data structures such as lists and trees are di cult to implement in C in a way that programmers have little or no di culties to maintain and reuse the source code. Thus, converting such data structures into instances of generic C++ components to increase the maintainability of the code is a reasonable task. Replacing data structures with instances of generic data structures is a non-trivial issue; handling dependencies accordingly causes even more e ort in the conversion. This paper points out the issues of replacing data structures with instances of generic components provided by libraries. We brie y describe the transformation process, related issues and give an outlook on future activities in this area. This paper shows the bene ts of generic source code components for reengineering and maintenance activities.