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Cited by 137Software Engineering ResearchOpen Source Software InnovationsAcademic integrity and plagiarism

An Empirical Study of Function Clones in Open Source Software

Roy, Chanchal K., Cordy, James R.·2008·2008 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering
DOI 10.1109/wcre.2008.54
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Abstract

The new hybrid clone detection tool NICAD combines the strengths and overcomes the limitations of both text-based and AST-based clone detection techniques to yield highly accurate identification of cloned code in software systems. In this paper, we present a first empirical study of function clones in open source software using NICAD. We examine more than 15 open source C and Java systems, including the entire Linux Kernel and Apache httpd, and analyze their use of cloned code in several different dimensions, including language, clone size, clone location and clone density by proportion of cloned functions. We manually verify all detected clones and provide a complete catalogue of different clones in an online repository in a variety of formats. These validated results can be used as a cloning reference for these systems and as a benchmark for evaluating other clone detection tools.

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  • Programmers tend to reuse existing code snippets by copying part of code with or without minor modifications to accelerate software development.

    “programmers tend to reuse an existing code snippet by copying part of code with or without minor modifications to accelerate software development (Roy and Cordy, 2008; Baker, 2007)”

    From ReACC: A Retrieval-Augmented Code Completion Framework (2022) · cites this paper as Roy and Cordy, 2008

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Authors
Roy, C. K., & Cordy, J. R.
Affiliations
Queen's University Belfast (GB)
ORCID
Roy, Chanchal K.
Venue
2008 15th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering
Publisher
IEEE
Published
2008-10
Pages
81-90
ISSN
1095-1350 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1109/wcre.2008.54
OpenAlex
W2136128399
Cited by
137
References
0
Citations by year
2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 14 · 2012: 12
FWCI
6.02
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE) (publishedVersion)
Funders
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Academic integrity and plagiarism
Keywords
clone detection, open source software, clone size, Linux kernel

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