NiCad: A Modern Clone Detector

Abstract

Code clones are exactly or nearly similar code fragments in the code-base of a software system. Studies have revealed that such code fragments can have mixed impact (both positive and negative) on software evolution and maintenance. In order to reduce the negative impact of code clones and benifit from their advantages, researchers have suggested a number of different clone management techniques. Clone management begins with clone detection. Clone detection has thus been a hot research topic, resulting in many different clone detectors [26, 32] that have been used in a range of applications, including clone analysis, refactoring, and tracking. One of those that has been widely used and investigated is NiCad [3, 27]. What follows is a brief overview of the NiCad detection mechanism and its application in various studies of code clones.