Ragkhitwetsagul, C;
Krinke, J;
Clark, D;
(2016)
Similarity of Source Code in the Presence of Pervasive Modifications.
In:
Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM).
(pp. pp. 117-126).
IEEE
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Abstract
Source code analysis to detect code cloning, code plagiarism, and code reuse suffers from the problem of pervasive code modifications, i.e. transformations that may have a global effect. We compare 30 similarity detection techniques and tools against pervasive code modifications. We evaluate the tools using two experimental scenarios for Java source code. These are (1) pervasive modifications created with tools for source code and bytecode obfuscation and (2) source code normalisation through compilation and decompilation using different decompilers. Our experimental results show that highly specialised source code similarity detection techniques and tools can perform better than more general, textual similarity measures. Our study strongly validates the use of compilation/decompilation as a normalisation technique. Its use reduced false classifications to zero for six of the tools. This broad, thorough study is the largest in existence and potentially an invaluable guide for future users of similarity detection in source code.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Similarity of Source Code in the Presence of Pervasive Modifications |
| Event: | 16th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM) |
| Location: | Raleigh, NC |
| Dates: | 02 October 2016 - 03 October 2016 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1109/SCAM.2016.13 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM.2016.13 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. |
| Keywords: | Cloning, Plagiarism, Detectors, Java, Optimization, Open source software |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508117 |
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