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On the Structural Code Clone Detection Problem: A Survey and Software Metric Based Approach

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Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2014 (ICCSA 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8583))

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Abstract

Unnecessary repeated codes (clones) have not been well documented and are difficult to maintain. Code clones may become an important problem in software development cycle and they must be fixed in all occurrences. This condition increases significantly software maintenance costs and required effort/duration for understanding the code. Over the years, many techniques have been proposed in order to minimize or prevent the code cloning problems. The main focus of these techniques is on the detection of clones. In such studies, code cloning is studied under two main categories: simple and structural. Simple clone is defined as the similarity that arises from the repetition of the code snippet in the software. Structural clone is defined as the similarity in software structure (i.e. design patterns and object oriented programming class relations). Simple clone detection techniques fail to determine the reasons of code repetition whether it is due to design or not, as they do not look at the code from a wider perspective for repetitive code snippets. In this study, we survey the existing structural clones approaches. We also introduce an approach that utilizes software quality metrics for detecting the structural code clones.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Corporate Development and Information Technologies Department, Turkish Airlines, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mustafa Kapdan & Melike Yigit

  2. Computer Engineering Department, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mustafa Kapdan & Mehmet Aktas

  3. Computer Engineering Department, Institute of Science, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Melike Yigit

Authors
  1. Mustafa Kapdan
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  2. Mehmet Aktas
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  3. Melike Yigit
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, 85100, Potenza, Italy

    Beniamino Murgante

  2. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Sanjay Misra

  3. Department of Production and Systems, University of Minho, 4710-057, Braga, Portugal

    Ana Maria A. C. Rocha

  4. DICAR, Polytecnico di Bari, 70125, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Torre

  5. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Jorge Gustavo Rocha  & Maria Irene Falcão  & 

  6. Monash University, 3800,, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    David Taniar

  7. Department of Intelligent Informatics, Kyushu Sangyo University, 2-3-1 Matsukadai, 813-8503, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Bernady O. Apduhan

  8. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Perugia, Via Vanvitelli, 1, 06123, Perugia, Italy

    Osvaldo Gervasi

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Kapdan, M., Aktas, M., Yigit, M. (2014). On the Structural Code Clone Detection Problem: A Survey and Software Metric Based Approach. In: Murgante, B., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2014. ICCSA 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8583. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09156-3_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09156-3_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09155-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09156-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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