From: "gene.tani@..." <gene.tani@...>
Date: 2006-04-29T00:26:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Drops


Jake McArthur wrote:
> > How will it find similar code? One simple issue is that people will
> > name their variables and methods differently, so you'll want to
> > somehow see the structure of a section of code and ignore a lot of
> > details. But you can't ignore the details too much. Maybe (trivial
> > example) someone wrote a "max" function and someone else in-lined
> > it, and otherwise their code blocks are the same.
>
> I've already been working on this. Right now, I'm making a simple
> algorithm that works on arbitrary text and returns a number
> reflecting how similar two strings are. Even this alone has been
> giving fairly good results on code, even code that was written rather
> differently, but my plan is to use this algorithm to compare symbols
> and literals. A similar algorithm, working on a slightly larger
> scale, would compare entire lines of code for similar syntax,
> augmented by data from the first algorithm.
>
> I'm still thinking about this. Suggestions, anybody?
>

(my 1st ruby-talk post not from Google groups )
cyclomatic complexity may have some value as another input
http://saikuro.rubyforge.org/

also look at gonzui and doing some kind of vector space-LSI modelling
based on ruby keywords, core and std lib methodnames, etc.