Software metrics for aiding program development and debugging

Abstract

Computer program graphs have proven very useful because they illuminate the structural characteristics of a program. Structural characteristics, as a representation of program complexity, have been shown to be strongly related to program development time, program quality and difficulty of debugging. 1 – 3 The use of graphs for these purposes is not widely known or understood in the data processing community. It is the aim of this paper to provide an introduction to graphs as they apply to program representation and to show examples of their use in program design and debugging.