| TR#: | MSC-2017-27 |
| Class: | MSC |
| Title: | A Nano Patterns Language for Java |
| Authors: | Ori Marcovitch |
| Supervisors: | Prof. Yossi Gil |
| Currently accessibly only within the Technion network | |
| Abstract: | Patterns, micro-patterns, and nano-patterns have many applications: program
comprehension, code transformations, documentation aides, improving code
robustness, etc. This work revisits nano-patterns, taken here to be predicates
on short code snippets that represent some common and elementary programming
missions such as ‟\emph{for each~$m∈M$ do …}”, or, ‟\emph{use~$x$ (but if~$x$ is
\kk{null},~$y$ is a substitute)}”.
The \papertype describes a taxonomized \emph{language} of~\total{nanos} nano-patterns for Java. We also describe the process of patterns harvesting we used and the underlying rationale, including the \emph{prevalence threshold} criterion, which, capitalizing on Hirsch's famous~$h$-index, makes a robust yard stick of pattern's significance. An empirical survey of 78 OSS Java projects indicates that the language has substantial prevalence in code: about a third of commands (executable statements) and half of methods are instances of nano patterns in the proposed language. Also, the language's prevalence is typically higher than that of languages harvested in a project specific, automated machine learning process. Nano-patterns are implementation/language level details for most high level software engineering purposes. A contribution here is in identifying this clutter, appreciating its presence, and imposing order on it. The language, the nano patterns in it, and the contributed automatic tool for tracing nano patterns in code, may help to deal systematically with this low-level, yet significant, portion of code. |
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