Software Clone Detection: a Systematic Review
Information and Software Technology 55 (2013) 1165–1199 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Information and Software Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infsof Software clone detection: A systematic review ⇑ Dhavleesh Rattan a, , Rajesh Bhatia b,1, Maninder Singh c,2 a Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Information and Technology, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur Engineering College, Fatehgarh Sahib 140 407, Punjab, India b Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Murthal (Sonepat) 131 039, Haryana, India c Computer Science and Engineering Department, Thapar University, Patiala 147 004, Punjab, India article info abstract Article history: Context: Reusing software by means of copy and paste is a frequent activity in software development. The Received 21 June 2011 duplicated code is known as a software clone and the activity is known as code cloning. Software clones Received in revised form 29 December 2012 may lead to bug propagation and serious maintenance problems. Accepted 21 January 2013 Objective: This study reports an extensive systematic literature review of software clones in general and Available online 14 February 2013 software clone detection in particular. Method: We used the standard systematic literature review method based on a comprehensive set of 213 Keywords: articles from a total of 2039 articles published in 11 leading journals and 37 premier conferences and Software clone workshops. Clone detection Systematic literature review Results: Existing literature about software clones is classified broadly into different categories. The Semantic clones importance of semantic clone detection and model based clone detection led to different classifications. Model based clone Empirical evaluation of clone detection tools/techniques is presented.
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