Abstract: According to the present invention, a program development support system prepares a correspondence information table to correlate the lines in the program specification with those for the source program generated based on that specification and stores it as the correspondence information file. By omitting the data in one-to-one correspondence between the specification lines and source program lines from the data in the correspondence information table, a line number information table can be obtained as a compression of the correspondence information table. This line number information table is transmitted from the host to the terminal. At the terminal, by reference to the transmitted line number table, the line number in the source program corresponding to a certain designated location in the specification can be searched for and displayed.