A Tool to Suggest Similar Program Element Modifications

Abstract

Many program tasks require continuous modification of similar program elements, which is burdensome on programmers because continuous modifications are time consuming and some modifications are easily overlooked. To resolve this issue, we developed a tool, named Similar Highlight, which extracted all possible matching elements via similarity patterns from recently modified elements using a sub syntax tree comparison. Similar Highlight suggests similar program elements that may be modified during the next modification. Potential elements are highlighted and their text can be immediately selected by shortcut keys. Evaluations indicate that Similar Highlight can improve programming productivity. Currently, Similar Highlight supports C, C#, JAVA, Java Script, and PHP, but in the future we will expand it to other languages.