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KBSE
2009
IEEE

Improving API Usage through Automatic Detection of Redundant Code

13 years 10 months ago
Improving API Usage through Automatic Detection of Redundant Code
—Software projects often rely on third-party libraries made accessible through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). We have observed many cases where APIs are used in ways that are not the most effective. We developed a technique and tool support to automatically detect such patterns of API usage in software projects. The main hypothesis underlying our technique is that client code imitating the behavior of an API method without calling it may not be using the API effectively because it could instead call the method it imitates. Our technique involves analyzing software systems to detect cases of API method imitations. In addition to warning developers of potentially reimplemented API methods, we also indicate how to improve the use of the API. Applying our approach on 10 Java systems revealed over 400 actual cases of potentially suboptimal API usage, leading to many improvements to the quality of the code we studied.
David Kawrykow, Martin P. Robillard
Added 21 May 2010
Updated 21 May 2010
Type Conference
Year 2009
Where KBSE
Authors David Kawrykow, Martin P. Robillard
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