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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14169
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| Title: | SIMPLIFIED READABILITY METRICS |
| Authors: | Yung, Chung |
| Issue Date: | 6-Jan-1997 |
| Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
| Series/Report no.: | IS-97-01 |
| Abstract: | This paper describes a new approach to measuring the complexity of
software systems with considering their readability. Readability Metrics
were first proposed by Chung and Yung 181 in 1990. Software industry
uses software metrics to measure the complexity of software systems for
software cost estimation, software development control, software
assurance, software testing, and software maintenance [3], [71, [9],
151, [18]. Most of the software metrics measure the software complexity
by one or more of the software attributes. We usually class@ the
software attributes that software metrics use for measuring complexity
into three categories: size, control flow, and data flow [5], f71. All
the three categories concern with the physical activities of software
development. Readability Metrics have been outstanding among the
existing software complexity metrics for taking nonphysical software
attributes, like readability, into considerations [8]. The applications
of Readability Metrics are good in indicating the additional efforts
required for less readable software systems, and help in keeping the
software systems maintainable. However, the numerous metrics and the
complicated formulas in the family usually make it tedious to apply
Readability Metrics to large scale software systems. In this paper, we
propose a simplified approach to Readability Metrics. We reduce the
number of required measures and keep the considerations on software
readability. We introduce our Readability model in a more formal way.
The Readability Metrics preprocesses algorithm is developed with
compilers front-end techniques. The experiment results show that this
simplified approach has good predictive power in measuring software
complexity with software readability, in addition to its ease of
applying. The applications of Readability Metrics indicate the
readability of software systems and help in keeping the source code
readable and maintainable. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14169 |
| Appears in Collections: | IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers
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