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Related papers: How We Refactor and How We Document it? On the Use…

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Large Language Models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, have gained widespread popularity and usage in various software engineering tasks, including refactoring, testing, code review, and program comprehension. Despite recent studies delving into…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-02-12 Eman Abdullah AlOmar , Anushkrishna Venkatakrishnan , Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer , Christian D. Newman , Ali Ouni

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown potential to enhance software development through automated code generation and refactoring, reducing development time and improving code quality. This study empirically evaluates StarCoder2, an LLM…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Jonathan Cordeiro , Shayan Noei , Ying Zou

Large language models (LLMs) have gained widespread popularity and have steadily improved over time, enabling software developers to use them for various code-related tasks. One common task is code refactoring, where the LLM suggests…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-07 David Schön , Faiza Amjad , Tehreem Asif , Ranim Khojah , Mazen Mohamad , Francisco Gomes de Oliveira Neto , Philipp Leitner

The ever-growing popularity of mobile phones has brought additional challenges to the software development lifecycle. Mobile applications (apps, for short) ought to provide the same set of features as conventional software, with limited…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-03-16 Luis Cruz , Rui Abreu

Incorrect placement of methods within classes is a typical code smell called Feature Envy, which causes additional maintenance and cost during evolution. To remove this design flaw, several Move Method refactoring tools have been proposed.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-12-26 Di Cui , Siqi Wang , Yong Luo , Xingyu Li , Jie Dai , Lu Wang , Qingshan Li

Software architecture consists of series of decisions taken to give a structural solution that meets all the technical and operational requirements. The paper involves code refactoring. Code refactoring is a process of changing the internal…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2014-12-25 Manpreet Kaur , Ravjeet Singh , Sukhveer Kaur , Baljot Singh , Savpreet Kaur , Navkaran Singh , Aman Ohri , Ravenna Sharma

To refactor already working code while keeping reliability, compatibility and perhaps security, we can borrow ideas from micropass/nanopass compilers. By treating the procedure of software refactoring as composing code transformations, and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-08-15 Yu Liu

Developers often refactor source code to improve its quality during software development. A challenge in refactoring is to determine if it can be applied or not. To help with this decision-making process, we aim to search for past…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Motoki Abe , Shinpei Hayashi

Complex software can be hard to read, adapt, and maintain. Refactoring it can create cleaner and self-explanatory code. Refactoring tools try to guide developers towards better code, with more quality. However, most of them take too long to…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-07-21 Sara Fernandes , Ademar Aguiar , André Restivo

Refactorings are structured changes to existing software that leave its externally observable behaviour unchanged. Their intent is to improve readability, performance or other non-behavioural properties. State-of-the-art automatic…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-12-21 Cristina David , Pascal Kesseli , Daniel Kroening

Refactoring is an activity that improves the internal structure of the code without altering its external behavior. When performed on the production code, the tests can be used to verify that the external behavior of the production code is…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2015-06-25 Ali Parsai , Alessandro Murgia , Quinten David Soetens , Serge Demeyer

We present a novel approach to detect refactoring opportunities by measuring the participation of references between types in instances of patterns representing design flaws. This technique is validated using an experiment where we analyse…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2011-03-17 Jens Dietrich , Catherine McCartin , Ewan Tempero , Syed M. Ali Shah

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used for automated code refactoring tasks. Although these models can quickly refactor code, the quality may exhibit inconsistencies and unpredictable behavior. In this article, we systematically…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Norman Peitek , Julia Hess , Sven Apel

Architectural smells such as God Class, Cyclic Dependency, and Hub-like Dependency degrade software quality and maintainability. Existing tools detect such smells but rarely suggest how to fix them. This paper explores the use of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Samal Nursapa , Anastassiya Samuilova , Alessio Bucaioni , Phuong T. Nguyen

Software refactoring is the process of changing the structure of software without any alteration in its behavior and functionality. Presuming it is carried out in appropriate opportunities, refactoring enhances software quality…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-01-20 Hanieh Khosravi , Abbas Rasoolzadegan

Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently attracted wide interest for tackling software engineering tasks. In contrast to code generation, refactoring demands precise, semantics-preserving edits that improve program structure, which also…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Yisen Xu , Jinqiu Yang , Tse-Hsun , Chen

Refactoring is modifying a program without changing its external behavior. In this paper, we make the concept of external behavior precise for a simple answer set programming language. Then we describe a proof assistant for the task of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-05-30 Jorge Fandinno , Zachary Hansen , Yuliya Lierler , Vladimir Lifschitz , Nathan Temple

Like software, requirements evolve and change frequently during the development process. Refactoring is the process of reorganising software without changing its behaviour, to make it easier to understand and modify. We propose refactoring…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-01-13 Marie Farrell , Matt Luckcuck , Oisin Sheridan , Rosemary Monahan

Just-in-time defect prediction (JIT-DP) aims to predict the likelihood of code changes resulting in software defects at an early stage. Although code change metrics and semantic features have enhanced prediction accuracy, prior research has…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Feifei Niu , Junqian Shao , Christoph Mayr-Dorn , Liguo Huang , Wesley K. G. Assunção , Chuanyi Li , Jidong Ge , Alexander Egyed

Injection-based testing while refactoring is a pattern that minimizes the need for manual editing when altering the behaviour of a code base. Neither does it rely on a compilation or a linking process nor does it make assumptions on the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-29 Thomas Mejstrik , Clara Hollomey