AOP on the C-side

Although aspect-oriented programming originally emerged to over-come fundamental modularity problems in object-oriented applica-tions, its ideas have long been backported to legacy languages like Cobol, C,... As systems written in these languages are prime tar-gets for re(verse)-engineering efforts, aspects can now be used for these purposes. Before applying dynamic analysis techniques on an industrial case study (453 KLOC of C) using aspects, we de-vised a list of requirements for possible aspect frameworks. In this paper we explain why no existing framework for C fulfilled all our requirements. We discuss the problems we encountered with As-picere, our own aspect language for C. We also suggest points of improvement for future reverse-engineering efforts