When Are Names Similar Or the Same? Introducing the Code Names Matcher Library

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Code Names Matcher library, a set of functions designed to compare code element names by capturing human-like perceptions of similarity, accommodating variations, errors, and synonyms.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel library of comparison functions tailored for code names, addressing variability and human perception in name similarity assessment.

Findings

Provides multiple similarity functions for code names

Addresses spelling, reordering, and synonym variations

Facilitates more human-like code name comparison

Abstract

Program code contains functions, variables, and data structures that are represented by names. To promote human understanding, these names should describe the role and use of the code elements they represent. But the names given by developers show high variability, reflecting the tastes of each developer, with different words used for the same meaning or the same words used for different meanings. This makes comparing names hard. A precise comparison should be based on matching identical words, but also take into account possible variations on the words (including spelling and typing errors), reordering of the words, matching between synonyms, and so on. To facilitate this we developed a library of comparison functions specifically targeted to comparing names in code. The different functions calculate the similarity between names in different ways, so a researcher can choose the one appropriate for his specific needs. All of them share an attempt to reflect human perceptions of similarity, at the possible expense of lexical matching.