An Extended Stable Marriage Problem Algorithm for Clone Detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extended stable marriage problem algorithm to improve clone detection in software by increasing similarity measures, resulting in better scalability and accuracy.

Contribution

It extends the stable marriage problem algorithm to enhance code clone detection capabilities with a novel bijective matching approach.

Findings

Improved clone detection precision and scalability

Enhanced similarity measurement range

Prototype demonstrates noticeable accuracy improvements

Abstract

Code cloning negatively affects industrial software and threatens intellectual property. This paper presents a novel approach to detecting cloned software by using a bijective matching technique. The proposed approach focuses on increasing the range of similarity measures and thus enhancing the precision of the detection. This is achieved by extending a well-known stable-marriage problem (SMP) and demonstrating how matches between code fragments of different files can be expressed. A prototype of the proposed approach is provided using a proper scenario, which shows a noticeable improvement in several features of clone detection such as scalability and accuracy.