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Restructuring software: A case study
Tim Hopkins
Technical Report 2-96*, University of Kent, Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, January 1996.Abstract
<< This is an updated version of 27-94 >>
We use knot count and path count metrics to identify which routines in the Level 1 BLAS might benefit from code restructuring. We then consider how both logical restructuring and the improvements in the facilities available from successive versions of Fortran have allowed us to improve both the complexity of the code as measured by knot count, path count and cyclomatic complexity, and the user interface of one of the identified routines which compute the Euclidean norm of a vector. With these reductions in complexity we hope that we have contributed to improvements in the maintainability and clarity of the code. Software complexity metrics and the control graph are used to quantify and provide a visual guide to the quality of the software, and the performance of a Fortran code restructuring tool is reported. Finally we give some indication of the cost of the extra numerical robustness offered by the BLAS routine over the use of new Fortran 90 intrinsic functions.
Accepted for publication in Software: Practice and Experience.
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Bibtex Record
@techreport{53,
author = {Tim Hopkins},
title = {Restructuring Software: A Case Study},
month = {January},
year = {1996},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/1996/53},
address = {University of Kent, Canterbury, UK},
hensa_abstractfilename = {pub/misc/ukc.reports/comp.sci/abstracts/2-96},
hensa_ftpaddress = {unix.hensa.ac.uk},
hensa_reportfilename = {pub/misc/ukc.reports/comp.sci/reports/2-96.ps.Z},
institution = {University of Kent, Computing Laboratory},
number = {2-96*},
}