Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Duplicate code
Summary
In computer programming, duplicate code is a sequence of source code that occurs more than once, either within a program or across different programs owned or maintained by the same entity. Duplicate code is generally considered undesirable for a number of reasons. A minimum requirement is usually applied to the quantity of code that must appear in a sequence for it to be considered duplicate rather than coincidentally similar. Sequences of duplicate code are sometimes known as code clones or just clones, the automated process of finding duplications in source code is called clone detection.
Two code sequences may be duplicates of each other without being character-for-character identical, for example by being character-for-character identical only when white space characters and comments are ignored, or by being token-for-token identical, or token-for-token identical with occasional variation. Even code sequences that are only functionally identical may be considered duplicate code.
Some of the ways in which duplicate code may be created are:
copy and paste programming, which in academic settings may be done as part of plagiarism
scrounging, in which a section of code is copied "because it works". In most cases this operation involves slight modifications in the cloned code, such as renaming variables or inserting/deleting code. The language nearly always allows one to call one copy of the code from different places, so that it can serve multiple purposes, but instead the programmer creates another copy, perhaps because they
do not understand the language properly
do not have the time to do it properly, or
do not care about the increased active software rot.
It may also happen that functionality is required that is very similar to that in another part of a program, and a developer independently writes code that is very similar to what exists elsewhere. Studies suggest that such independently rewritten code is typically not syntactically similar.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (2)
BIO-645: Introduction to Applied Data Science (I2ADS)
The "Introduction to Applied Data Science" (I2ADS) course is aimed at students of all levels to train them in the core computer science software stack and techniques forming the pillars of open & repr
EE-490(g): Lab on app development for tablets and smartphones
This course focuses on mobile application programming for the Android ecosystem. Students learn to develop distributed Apps on mobile platforms, interfacing with multiple heterogeneous devices and the
Related concepts (9)
Decomposition (computer science)
Decomposition in computer science, also known as factoring, is breaking a complex problem or system into parts that are easier to conceive, understand, program, and maintain. There are different types of decomposition defined in computer sciences: In structured programming, algorithmic decomposition breaks a process down into well-defined steps. Structured analysis breaks down a software system from the system context level to system functions and data entities as described by Tom DeMarco.Tom DeMarco (1978).
Code smell
In computer programming, a code smell is any characteristic in the source code of a program that possibly indicates a deeper problem. Determining what is and is not a code smell is subjective, and varies by language, developer, and development methodology. The term was popularised by Kent Beck on WardsWiki in the late 1990s. Usage of the term increased after it was featured in the 1999 book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. It is also a term used by agile programmers.
Object-oriented programming
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as methods). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object.