Supporting Code Clone Inspection using Parameterized Clone Pattern

Abstract

Code clone inspection is an integral part of software clone management to assess the quality of clones or the tools reporting them, to decide how to resolve code clone issues, and so on. As clone inspection is a manual process its feasibility is limited especially when working with large numbers of clones. This is rather critical as clone detection tools may return many clones even when applied to medium sized projects. Parameterized Clone Pattern abstracts clones using parameters and merge them into shared “patterns”. The more abstract view on clones reduces the number of necessary manual clone inspections. In addition this approach can be used to provide intuitive visualizations of clones, report potential problems, suggest possible next steps etc.. This makes Parameterized Clone Pattern a good candidate to improve clone inspection efficiency.