Software Code Clones and Their Detection

ABSTRACT

The subject of clone detection has its relevance for industry professionals, academicians, and researchers, who are working in the field of software code cloning, software engineering, and open-source software systems. It has its importance due to the potential for a reduced cost, time, and effort. An already existing code helps in faster development as it has been already tried and tested, resulting in saving the development cost and time. But the idea brings the problem like inconsistency, interoperability and degrades the performance of the system as the system evolves. This paper presents detailed categorization of code clones concerning different properties of the clones. Various clone definitions and categories are available in the software literature. These are defined and categorized on the basis of their underlying algorithms and thresholds used. The mechanism for clone differentiation is also mentioned. With the use of cloning quality improvement task is also being performed along with the code up-gradation task. The time it takes to develop code is also reduced by picking up the already available code and develops the clones.

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