程序理解是软件工程中的关键活动，在软件开发、维护、重用等任务中发挥着重要的作用.程序理解自软件工程出现以来，就一直是该领域的研究热点.随着软件应用的日益复杂和不断普及，程序理解研究的需求发生了新的变化，程序的自理解或自认知逐渐成为新的关注点，有必要对程序理解进行重新审视.从工程、学习和认知以及方法和技术这3个角度定位程序理解任务；随后，通过文献分析展示其研究布局，进而分别从认知过程、理解技术以及软件工程任务中的应用这3个方面，综合论述程序理解研究的发展脉络和研究进展.

Program comprehension is a key activity in software engineering and plays an important role in software development, software maintenance, and software reuse. Since the advent of software engineering, program comprehension has always been a hot research hotspot issue in this field. With the increasing complexity and popularity of software, the needs for program comprehension have been changed. The program self-understanding and self-awareness have gradually become new focuses. Therefore, it is highly desired to re-examine the purposes, the tasks and the techniques of program comprehension. Firstly, this paper dicsusses the program comprehension from the 3 perspectives, namely, the engineering, the learning cognition, as well as the techniques. Then, it shows the degree of research attentions through literature analysis. Furthermore, it discusses the research progress from three aspects, i.e., the cognitive process, the methods and techniques, and the software engineering tasks. Finally, it discusses the development trend and challengs.

国家重点基础研究发展计划（973）（2015CB352201）；国家自然科学基金（61620106007，61751210）