Metric pictures: The approach and applications

Source code metrics evaluate some aspects of software artefacts and provide synthetic measures of examined characteristics. Metrics are broadly adopted for code tracking, analysis and comprehension. In this paper, we present Metric Pictures, raster images obtained from source code metrics. With this method, the paper introduces algebra, derived from Image Elaboration, sounding with metric definitions. Metric Pictures with their operation set can be generally useful for underlining interesting features of analyzed code. As an example, the paper describes the application of the underlying logic and operators to Dead Code detection.