Identifying Word Relations in Software: A Comparative Study of Semantic Similarity Tools

Modern software systems are typically large and complex, making comprehension of these systems extremely difficult. Experienced programmers comprehend code by seamlessly processing synonyms and other word relations. Thus, we believe that automated comprehension and software tools can be significantl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sridhara, G., Hill, E., Pollock, L., Vijay-Shanker, K.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
automated natural language analysis
comparative study
Natural languages
Performance evaluation
Programming profession
semantic similarity techniques
Software maintenance
Software performance
Software quality
Software systems
Software tools
Vehicles
word relations
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Summary:Modern software systems are typically large and complex, making comprehension of these systems extremely difficult. Experienced programmers comprehend code by seamlessly processing synonyms and other word relations. Thus, we believe that automated comprehension and software tools can be significantly improved by leveraging word relations in software. In this paper, we perform a comparative study of six state of the art, English-based semantic similarity techniques and evaluate their effectiveness on words from the comments and identifiers in software. Our results suggest that applying English-based semantic similarity techniques to software without any customization could be detrimental to the performance of the client software tools. We propose strategies to customize the existing semantic similarity techniques to software, and describe how various program comprehension tools can benefit from word relation information.
ISSN:1092-8138
DOI:10.1109/ICPC.2008.18