Toward a Code-Clone Search through the Entire Lifecycle of a Software Product

Abstract

This paper presents a clone-detection method/tool currently under devel-
opment. This tool is useful as a code-clone search through the entire lifecycle of
a software product; The tool searches code examples and analyzes of code clones
in both preventive and postmortem ways[LRHK10]. The approach is based on a
sequence equivalence on execution paths[Kam13] and extends the equivalence to
include gaps, thus type-3[BKA + 07] clone detection. Each of the detected clones is
a sub-sequence of an execution path of a given program, in other words, a set of code
fragments of multiple procedures (methods) which can be executed in a run of the
program. The approach is relaxed in terms of adaptability to incomplete (not-yet-
finished) code, but also makes use of concrete information such as types (including
hierarchy) and dynamic dispatch when such information is available.