Software defect indicator: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:04, 15 May 2009

Revision as of 23:36, 25 October 2013

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A '''Software Defect Indicator''' is a pattern that can be found in [[source code]] that is strongly correlated with a [[software defect]], an error or omission in the source code of a computer program that may cause it to malfunction. When inspecting the source code of [[computer program]]s, it is not always possible to identify defects directly, but there are often patterns, sometimes called [[anti-pattern|anti-patterns]]s, indicating that defects are present.

Some examples of Software Defect Indicators:

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* Routine Too Complex: A program (method, module, routine, subroutine, procedure, or any named block of code) contains more than 10 binary terms in conditional statements.<ref>William T. Ward: "Software Defect Prevention Using McCabe's Complexity Metric", ''Hewlett-Packard Journal'', April 1989, pp 64-69: Control-flow complexity has been correlated with low reliability and frequent errors.</ref>

* Unused Variables: Unreferenced variables are a strong indicator for other errors.<ref>David N. Card, Victor E. Church, and William W. Agresti: "An Empirical Study of Software Design Practices", ''IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering'', SE-12, no. 2, February 1986, pp 264-71: 46 percent of routines with no unused variables had no errors compared to only 17 to 29 percent for those with one or more unreferenced variables.</ref>

==References==

{{reflist}}

==See also==

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* [[Control flow]]

* [[Software engineering]]

==References==

{{reflist}}

==External links==