Method Verb Recommendation Using Association Rule Mining in a Set of Existing Projects

Yuki KASHIWABARA; Takashi ISHIO; Hideaki HATA; Katsuro INOUE

doi:10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276

Method Verb Recommendation Using Association Rule Mining in a Set of Existing Projects

Yuki KASHIWABARA, Takashi ISHIO, Hideaki HATA, Katsuro INOUE

Full Text Views

0

Share
Cite this

Summary :

It is well-known that program readability is important for maintenance tasks. Method names are important identifiers for program readability because they are used for understanding the behavior of methods without reading a part of the program. Although developers can create a method name by arbitrarily choosing a verb and objects, the names are expected to represent the behavior consistently. However, it is not easy for developers to choose verbs and objects consistently since each developer may have a different notion of a suitable lexicon for method names. In this paper, we propose a technique to recommend candidate verbs for a method name so that developers can use various verbs consistently. We recommend candidate verbs likely to be used as a part of a method name, using association rules extracted from existing methods. To evaluate our technique, we have extracted rules from 445 open source projects written in Java and confirmed the accuracy of our approach by applying the extracted rules to several open source applications. As a result, we found that 84.9% of the considered methods in four projects are recommended the existing verb. Moreover, we found that 73.2% of the actual renamed methods in six projects are recommended the correct verb.

Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information Vol.E98-D No.3 pp.627-636

Publication Date: 2015/03/01

Publicized: 2014/12/16

Online ISSN: 1745-1361

DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276

Type of Manuscript: PAPER

Category: Software Engineering

Authors

Yuki KASHIWABARA
  Osaka University
Takashi ISHIO
  Osaka University
Hideaki HATA
  Nara Institute of Science and Technology
Katsuro INOUE
  Osaka University

Keyword

software readability, recommendation, method name, association rule

Cite this

Copy

Yuki KASHIWABARA, Takashi ISHIO, Hideaki HATA, Katsuro INOUE, "Method Verb Recommendation Using Association Rule Mining in a Set of Existing Projects" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information, vol. E98-D, no. 3, pp. 627-636, March 2015, doi: 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276.
Abstract: It is well-known that program readability is important for maintenance tasks. Method names are important identifiers for program readability because they are used for understanding the behavior of methods without reading a part of the program. Although developers can create a method name by arbitrarily choosing a verb and objects, the names are expected to represent the behavior consistently. However, it is not easy for developers to choose verbs and objects consistently since each developer may have a different notion of a suitable lexicon for method names. In this paper, we propose a technique to recommend candidate verbs for a method name so that developers can use various verbs consistently. We recommend candidate verbs likely to be used as a part of a method name, using association rules extracted from existing methods. To evaluate our technique, we have extracted rules from 445 open source projects written in Java and confirmed the accuracy of our approach by applying the extracted rules to several open source applications. As a result, we found that 84.9% of the considered methods in four projects are recommended the existing verb. Moreover, we found that 73.2% of the actual renamed methods in six projects are recommended the correct verb.
URL: https://globals.ieice.org/en_transactions/information/10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276/_p

Copy

@ARTICLE{e98-d_3_627,
author={Yuki KASHIWABARA, Takashi ISHIO, Hideaki HATA, Katsuro INOUE, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information},
title={Method Verb Recommendation Using Association Rule Mining in a Set of Existing Projects},
year={2015},
volume={E98-D},
number={3},
pages={627-636},
abstract={It is well-known that program readability is important for maintenance tasks. Method names are important identifiers for program readability because they are used for understanding the behavior of methods without reading a part of the program. Although developers can create a method name by arbitrarily choosing a verb and objects, the names are expected to represent the behavior consistently. However, it is not easy for developers to choose verbs and objects consistently since each developer may have a different notion of a suitable lexicon for method names. In this paper, we propose a technique to recommend candidate verbs for a method name so that developers can use various verbs consistently. We recommend candidate verbs likely to be used as a part of a method name, using association rules extracted from existing methods. To evaluate our technique, we have extracted rules from 445 open source projects written in Java and confirmed the accuracy of our approach by applying the extracted rules to several open source applications. As a result, we found that 84.9% of the considered methods in four projects are recommended the existing verb. Moreover, we found that 73.2% of the actual renamed methods in six projects are recommended the correct verb.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276},
ISSN={1745-1361},
month={March},}

Copy

TY - JOUR
TI - Method Verb Recommendation Using Association Rule Mining in a Set of Existing Projects
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SP - 627
EP - 636
AU - Yuki KASHIWABARA
AU - Takashi ISHIO
AU - Hideaki HATA
AU - Katsuro INOUE
PY - 2015
DO - 10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7276
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
SN - 1745-1361
VL - E98-D
IS - 3
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information
Y1 - March 2015
AB - It is well-known that program readability is important for maintenance tasks. Method names are important identifiers for program readability because they are used for understanding the behavior of methods without reading a part of the program. Although developers can create a method name by arbitrarily choosing a verb and objects, the names are expected to represent the behavior consistently. However, it is not easy for developers to choose verbs and objects consistently since each developer may have a different notion of a suitable lexicon for method names. In this paper, we propose a technique to recommend candidate verbs for a method name so that developers can use various verbs consistently. We recommend candidate verbs likely to be used as a part of a method name, using association rules extracted from existing methods. To evaluate our technique, we have extracted rules from 445 open source projects written in Java and confirmed the accuracy of our approach by applying the extracted rules to several open source applications. As a result, we found that 84.9% of the considered methods in four projects are recommended the existing verb. Moreover, we found that 73.2% of the actual renamed methods in six projects are recommended the correct verb.
ER -