Technical gazette, Vol. 27 No. 1, 2020.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17559/TV-20181030091239
Metric and Tool Support for Instant Feedback of Source Code Readability
Sangchul Choi
; Dept. of Software Engineering, CAIIT, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Jeonbuk, Republic of Korea
Suntae Kim*
; Dept. of Software Engineering, CAIIT, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Jeonbuk, Republic of Korea
JeongAh Kim*
; Dept. of Computer Education, Catholic Kwandong University, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, 24341 Republic of Korea
Sooyong Park
; Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, 04107 Republic of Korea
Abstract
In the software maintenance phase, comprehending the legacy source code is inevitable, which consumes most of the time of the phase. The better the code is readable, the easier it is for code readers to comprehend the system based on the source code. This paper proposes an enhanced source code readability metric to quantitatively measure the extent of code readability. In addition, we developed a tool support named Instant R. Gauge to update the code on the fly based on the readability feedback of the current code. The tool also provides the history of the readability change so that developers recognize the more readable code and gradually change their coding habit without any annoying advice. The suggested readability metric achieves 75.74% of explanatory power, and our experiment showed that readability of most of the methods authored in our tool is higher than that of the methods without our approach.
Keywords
multiple linear regression; readability; source code analysis
Hrčak ID:
234224
URI
Publication date:
15.2.2020.
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