Code clone detection using string based tree matching technique

Abstract

As the world of computers is rapidly evolving, there is a tremendous need of software development for different purposes. As we can see today, the complexity of the software being developed is different from one to another. Sometimes, developers take the easier way of implementation by copying some fragments of the existing programs and use the codes in their work. This kind of work is known as code cloning. Somehow the attitude of cloning can lead to the other issues of software development, for example plagiarism and software copyright infringement (Roy and Cordy, 2007). In most cases, in order to figure out the issues and help better software maintenance, we need to detect the codes that have been cloned (Baker, 1995). In the web applications development, the chances of cloning are bigger since there are too many open source software available on the Internet (Bailey and Burd, 2005). The applications are sometimes just a 'cosmetic' of another existing system. There are quite number of researches in software code cloning detection, but not so particularly in the area of web based applications.