Allowing overlapping boundaries in source code using a search based approach to concept binding

N Gold, M Harman, Z Li, S Kawada (Editor)

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paper

19 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

One approach to supporting program comprehension involves binding concepts to source code. Previously proposed approaches to concept binding have enforced nonoverlapping boundaries. However real-world programs may contain overlapping concepts. This paper presents techniques to allow boundary overlap in the binding of concepts to source code. In order to allow boundaries to overlap, the concept binding problem is reformulated as a search problem. It is shown that the search space of overlapping concept bindings is exponentially large, indicating the suitability of sampling-based search algorithms. Hill climbing and genetic algorithms are introduced for sampling the space. The paper reports on experiments that apply these algorithms to 21 COBOL II programs taken from the commercial financial services sector The results show that the genetic algorithm produces significantly better solutions than both the hill climber and random search
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIcsm 2006: 22Nd Ieee International Conference on Software Maintenance, Proceedings
Place of PublicationLOS ALAMITOS
PublisherIEEE COMPUTER SOC
Pages310 - 319
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)1063-6773
Publication statusPublished - 2006
Event22nd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance - Philadelphia, PA
Duration: 24 Sept 000627 Sept 0006

Publication series

NamePROCEEDINGS - IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE

Conference

Conference22nd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance
CityPhiladelphia, PA
Period24/09/000627/09/0006

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