Relating Identifier Naming Flaws and Code Quality: An Empirical Study

Author

Butler, Simon ; Wermelinger, Michel ; Yu, Yijun ; Sharp, Helen

Author_Institution

Centre for Res. in Comput., Open Univ., Milton Keynes, UK

fYear

2009

fDate

13-16 Oct. 2009

Firstpage

31

Lastpage

35

Abstract

Studies have demonstrated the importance of good identifier names to program comprehension. It is unclear, however, whether poor naming has other effects that might impact maintenance effort, e.g. on code quality. We evaluated the quality of identifier names in 8 established open source Java applications libraries, using a set of 12 identifier naming guidelines. We found statistically significant associations between flawed identifiers (i.e. violating at least one guideline) and code quality issues reported by FindBugs, a static analysis tool.

Keywords

Java; public domain software; software libraries; software metrics; software quality; source coding; FindBugs; code quality; identifier naming flaws; open source Java applications libraries; program comprehension; software metrics; software quality; static analysis tool; Application software; Guidelines; Java; Natural languages; Programming profession; Reverse engineering; Software libraries; Software metrics; Software quality; Software standards; programming; software metrics; software quality;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reverse Engineering, 2009. WCRE '09. 16th Working Conference on

Conference_Location

Lille

ISSN

1095-1350

Print_ISBN

978-0-7695-3867-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WCRE.2009.50

Filename

5328661