Hypothesis-based concept assignment to support software maintenance

Software maintenance is typically the most expensive part of the software lifecycle, with program comprehension forming the most costly part of software maintenance. This paper outlines a method for assisting program comprehension by addressing the concept assignment problem. The method, termed Hypothesis-Based Concept Assignment, uses informal information contained within source code to reason plausibly about the concepts contained within the code. An extensive evaluation has shown that the method can accurately recognise concepts in a range of real-world programs