Reuse of modular software with automated comment analysis

Presents an approach to software reuse based on automatic analysis of program comments. First, domain terms are extracted from the comments in a semi-automatic procedure. Those terms are then used in an off-the-shelf case-based reasoning (CBR) system as indices for software modules. Noun phrases extracted from comments in LINPACK (a widely distributed linear algebra package) form the basis of simple domain models for linear systems. The process of constructing a reuse system is broken into three steps. A file containing comments from all LINPACK routines is processed to yield a list of technical phrases. The second step involves building domain models based on an analysis of these technical phrases and then indexing cases according to these models. Finally, tools provided by the REMIND CBR shell are used to create a case library incorporating this domain knowledge. Early experiments described in the paper show that noun phrases automatically extracted from the comments can provide useful functional description of the routines. The resulting simple domain models are usually sufficient for software reuse applications. Finally, we found standard CBR technology to be a viable means of constructing compositional software reuse libraries