Related papers: RepliComment: Identifying Clones in Code Comments

Reusing code can produce duplicate or near-duplicate code clones in code repositories. Current code clone detection techniques, like Program Dependence Graphs, rely on code structure and their dependencies to detect clones. These techniques…

Code clone detection is involved with detecting duplicated fragments of code within a code base. Detecting these clones is useful for maintenance operations which require editing the clones. The tools developed are expected to be robust…

Software comments are critical for human understanding of software, and as such many comment generation techniques have been proposed. However, we find that a systematic evaluation of the factual accuracy of generated comments is rare; only…

Due to their pivotal role in software engineering, considerable effort is spent on the quality assurance of software requirements specifications. As they are mainly described in natural language, relatively few means of automated quality…

Code cloning is not only assumed to inflate maintenance costs but also considered defect-prone as inconsistent changes to code duplicates can lead to unexpected behavior. Consequently, the identification of duplicated code, clone detection,…

Code smells are symptoms of poor design quality. Since code review is a process that also aims at improving code quality, we investigate whether and how code review influences the severity of code smells. In this study, we analyze more than…

We are trying to find source code comments that help programmers understand a nontrivial part of source code. One of such examples would be explaining to assign a zero as a way to "clear" a buffer. Such comments are invaluable to…

Code cloning plays a very important role in open-source software engineering. The presence of clones within a project may indicate a need for refactoring, and clones between projects are even more interesting, since code migration takes…

A central function of code review is to increase understanding; helping reviewers understand a code change aids in knowledge transfer and finding bugs. Comments in code largely serve a similar purpose, helping future readers understand the…

As an integral part of source code files, code comments help improve program readability and comprehension. However, developers sometimes do not comment on their program code adequately due to the incurred extra efforts, lack of relevant…

Code review plays an important role in software quality control. A typical review process would involve a careful check of a piece of code in an attempt to find defects and other quality issues/violations. One type of issues that may impact…

Natural language comments convey key aspects of source code such as implementation, usage, and pre- and post-conditions. Failure to update comments accordingly when the corresponding code is modified introduces inconsistencies, which is…

Previous studies have shown that high-quality code comments assist developers in program comprehension and maintenance tasks. However, the semi-structured nature of comments, unclear conventions for writing good comments, and the lack of…

Duplicated code or code clones are a kind of code smell that have both positive and negative impacts on the development and maintenance of software systems. Software clone research in the past mostly focused on the detection and analysis of…

Detecting code clones is relevant to software maintenance and code refactoring. This challenge still presents unresolved cases, mainly when structural similarity does not reflect functional equivalence, though recent code models show…

Code review that detects and locates defects and other quality issues plays an important role in software quality control. One type of issue that may impact the quality of software is code smells. Yet, little is known about the extent to…

Software clones have been an active area of research for the past two decades. However, although numerous clone detection tools are now available, only a small fraction of the literature has focused on tool evaluation, and this is in fact…

The common use case of code smells assumes causality: Identify a smell, remove it, and by doing so improve the code. We empirically investigate their fitness to this use. We present a list of properties that code smells should have if they…

In software development and maintenance, code comments can help developers understand source code, and improve communication among developers. However, developers sometimes neglect to update the corresponding comment when changing the code,…

Code comments can help in program comprehension and are considered as important artifacts to help developers in software maintenance. However, the comments are mostly missing or are outdated, specially in complex software projects. As a…