Multilanguage Detection of Design Pattern Instances

IF 1.7 4区计算机科学 Q3 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING Journal of Software-Evolution and Process Pub Date : 2025-02-18 DOI:10.1002/smr.2738

Hugo Andrade, João Bispo, Filipe F. Correia

{"title":"Multilanguage Detection of Design Pattern Instances","authors":"Hugo Andrade, João Bispo, Filipe F. Correia","doi":"10.1002/smr.2738","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>Code comprehension is often supported by source code analysis tools that provide more abstract views over software systems, such as those detecting design patterns. These tools encompass analysis of source code and ensuing extraction of relevant information. However, the analysis of the source code is often specific to the target programming language. We propose DP-LARA, a multilanguage pattern detection tool that uses the multilanguage capability of the LARA framework to support finding pattern instances in a code base. LARA provides a virtual AST, which is common to multiple OOP programming languages, and DP-LARA then performs code analysis of detecting pattern instances on this abstract representation. We evaluate the detection performance and consistency of DP-LARA with a few software projects. Results show that a multilanguage approach does not compromise detection performance, and DP-LARA is consistent across the languages we tested it for (i.e., Java and C/C++). Moreover, by providing a virtual AST as the abstract representation, we believe to have decreased the effort of extending the tool to new programming languages and maintaining existing ones.</p>\n </div>","PeriodicalId":48898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Software-Evolution and Process","volume":"37 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Software-Evolution and Process","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smr.2738","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Code comprehension is often supported by source code analysis tools that provide more abstract views over software systems, such as those detecting design patterns. These tools encompass analysis of source code and ensuing extraction of relevant information. However, the analysis of the source code is often specific to the target programming language. We propose DP-LARA, a multilanguage pattern detection tool that uses the multilanguage capability of the LARA framework to support finding pattern instances in a code base. LARA provides a virtual AST, which is common to multiple OOP programming languages, and DP-LARA then performs code analysis of detecting pattern instances on this abstract representation. We evaluate the detection performance and consistency of DP-LARA with a few software projects. Results show that a multilanguage approach does not compromise detection performance, and DP-LARA is consistent across the languages we tested it for (i.e., Java and C/C++). Moreover, by providing a virtual AST as the abstract representation, we believe to have decreased the effort of extending the tool to new programming languages and maintaining existing ones.

查看原文