Influence of Identifier Length and Semantics on the Comprehensibility of Source Code

Abstract

Identifiers are essential for the understanding of source code. Programmers can name them arbitrarily, which is a major source for hard to understand code. We investigated how an identifier’s length and semantics affect program comprehensibility. In a controlled experiment, we showed that identifier names using proper words lead to a faster defect detection than identifier names using abbreviated words or single letters.