JClone: Syntax tree based clone detection for Java

Abstract: An unavoidable amount of money is spent on maintaining existing software systems today. Software maintenance cost generally higher than development cost of the system therefore lowering maintenance cost is highly appreciated in software industry. A significant part of maintenance activities is related to repeating the investigation of problems and applying repeated solutions several times. A software system may contain a common bug in several different places and it might take extra effort and time to fix all existences of this bug. This operation commonly increases the cost of Software Maintenance Activities. Detecting duplicate code fragments can significantly decrease the time and effort therefore the maintenance cost. Clone code detection can be achieved via analyzing the source code of given software system. An abstract syntax tree based clone detector for java systems is designed and implemented through this study. This master thesis examines a software engineering process to create an abstract syntax tree based clone detector for the projects implemented in Java programming language.