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An investigation of misunderstanding code patterns in C open-source software projects

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Abstract

Maintenance consumes 40% to 80% of software development costs. So, it is essential to write source code that is easy to understand to reduce the costs with maintenance. Improving code understanding is important because developers often mistake the meaning of code, and misjudge the program behavior, which can lead to errors. There are patterns in source code, such as operator precedence, and comma operator, that have been shown to influence code understanding negatively. Despite initial results, these patterns have not been evaluated in a real-world setting, though. Thus, it is not clear whether developers agree that the patterns studied by researchers can cause substantial misunderstandings in real-world practice. To better understand the relevance of misunderstanding patterns, we applied a mixed research method approach, by performing repository mining and a survey with developers, to evaluate misunderstanding patterns in 50 C open-source projects, including Apache, OpenSSL, and Python. Overall, we found more than 109K occurrences of the 12 patterns in practice. Our study shows that according to developers only some patterns considered previously by researchers may cause misunderstandings. Our results complement previous studies by taking the perception of developers into account.

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Fig. 1
Pattern 1
Pattern 2
Pattern 3
Pattern 4
Pattern 5
Pattern 6
Pattern 7
Pattern 8
Pattern 9
Pattern 10
Pattern 11
Pattern 12
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Notes

  1. https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/docs/CODE_STYLE.md

  2. http://cpsoftware.com.br/patterns/index.html

  3. http://www.openh264.org/

  4. https://rbcommons.com/s/OpenH264/r/465/diff/1#0

  5. https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Coding_Style

  6. https://github.com/google/styleguide

  7. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.html

  8. http://www.srcml.org/

  9. https://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/

  10. https://www.viva64.com/en/pvs-studio/

  11. http://www.srcml.org/

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dan Gopstein for the useful feedback regarding our study. Apel’s work has been supported by the German Research Foundation (AP 206/6). This work was funded by CNPq (308380/2016-9, 477943/2013-6, 460883/2014-3, 465614/2014-0, 306610/2013-2, 307190/2015-3, and also CNPq 409335/2016-9), FAPEAL (PPG 14/2016), and CAPES grants (175956 and 117875).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Institute of Alagoas (IFAL), Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil

    Flávio Medeiros & Gabriel Lima

  2. Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil

    Guilherme Amaral & Márcio Ribeiro

  3. Universität Passau, Passau, Germany

    Sven Apel

  4. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Christian Kästner

  5. Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Paraíba, Brazil

    Rohit Gheyi

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  1. Flávio Medeiros
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  3. Guilherme Amaral
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  4. Sven Apel
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  5. Christian Kästner
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  6. Márcio Ribeiro
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  7. Rohit Gheyi
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Correspondence to Flávio Medeiros.

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Communicated by: Christoph Treude

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Appendix A: Survey with Developers

Appendix A: Survey with Developers

We are investigating specific C constructions (code patterns) in the source code. This survey presents some code patterns and ask you about their influence in terms of understanding the source code. For each question we will present the code patterns at the Left-Hand Side (LHS) and an alternative on the Right-Hand Side (RHS).

You should be able to answer our survey in around 10-15 minutes. We will use your answers to understand the practical use of code patterns and develop supporting tools. We really appreciate your help. Thanks!

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Medeiros, F., Lima, G., Amaral, G. et al. An investigation of misunderstanding code patterns in C open-source software projects. Empir Software Eng 24, 1693–1726 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-018-9666-x

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