An Empirical Study on the Usage and Evolution of Identifier Styles in Practice

Jingxuan Zhang, W. Zou, Zhiqiu Huang
{"title":"An Empirical Study on the Usage and Evolution of Identifier Styles in Practice","authors":"Jingxuan Zhang, W. Zou, Zhiqiu Huang","doi":"10.1109/APSEC53868.2021.00025","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Identifiers play an important role in helping developers comprehend and maintain source code. In practice, developers usually employ two widely-used identifier styles, i.e., snake case and camel case, to format identifiers to make them understandable and informative. Despite researchers have empirically investigated the impacts of identifier styles on code comprehension activities, the usage and evolution of identifier styles, however, have not been fully explored. How are individual identifier styles formed in practice? How would identifier styles change and evolve? What are the potential impacts of identifier style-changes? Questions like these are important but have not been fully answered yet. In this paper, we conducted an empirical study on 9,792 GitHub projects to gain some insights into these problems. Specifically, we first analyzed how different identifier styles were formed in real software projects. Next, we explored the change patterns of identifier styles along with the project evolution. Finally, we investigated the potential impacts as well as categories of identifier style-changes. Our empirical results achieved some interesting findings. For example, we first reported some identifier style-change patterns (e.g., snake case →camel case → snake case), which could help developers resolve style-change problems in practice. Our study also provided some hints for researchers and developers when they use specific identifier styles in programs. For example, when researchers explore the impacts of identifier styles on code comprehension, they are suggested to consider the imbalanced distribution phenomenon of individual identifier styles. Besides, it is worthwhile for developers to build an identifier style-change prediction and propagation tool to reduce the style-change costs.","PeriodicalId":143800,"journal":{"name":"2021 28th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"2021 28th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/APSEC53868.2021.00025","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1

Abstract

Identifiers play an important role in helping developers comprehend and maintain source code. In practice, developers usually employ two widely-used identifier styles, i.e., snake case and camel case, to format identifiers to make them understandable and informative. Despite researchers have empirically investigated the impacts of identifier styles on code comprehension activities, the usage and evolution of identifier styles, however, have not been fully explored. How are individual identifier styles formed in practice? How would identifier styles change and evolve? What are the potential impacts of identifier style-changes? Questions like these are important but have not been fully answered yet. In this paper, we conducted an empirical study on 9,792 GitHub projects to gain some insights into these problems. Specifically, we first analyzed how different identifier styles were formed in real software projects. Next, we explored the change patterns of identifier styles along with the project evolution. Finally, we investigated the potential impacts as well as categories of identifier style-changes. Our empirical results achieved some interesting findings. For example, we first reported some identifier style-change patterns (e.g., snake case →camel case → snake case), which could help developers resolve style-change problems in practice. Our study also provided some hints for researchers and developers when they use specific identifier styles in programs. For example, when researchers explore the impacts of identifier styles on code comprehension, they are suggested to consider the imbalanced distribution phenomenon of individual identifier styles. Besides, it is worthwhile for developers to build an identifier style-change prediction and propagation tool to reduce the style-change costs.
实践中标识语风格使用与演变的实证研究
标识符在帮助开发人员理解和维护源代码方面发挥着重要作用。在实践中,开发人员通常使用两种广泛使用的标识符样式,即蛇形大小写和驼形大小写,来格式化标识符,使其易于理解和提供信息。尽管研究者们已经对标识符风格对代码理解活动的影响进行了实证研究,但标识符风格的使用和演变并没有得到充分的探讨。个人标识符风格在实践中是如何形成的?标识符样式将如何变化和发展?标识符样式更改的潜在影响是什么?这些问题很重要,但还没有得到充分的回答。在本文中,我们对9792个GitHub项目进行了实证研究,以期对这些问题有所了解。具体来说,我们首先分析了在实际的软件项目中不同的标识符样式是如何形成的。接下来,我们探讨了标识符样式随项目发展的变化模式。最后,我们调查了标识符风格变化的潜在影响和类别。我们的实证结果取得了一些有趣的发现。例如,我们首先报告了一些标识符样式更改模式(例如,蛇用例→骆驼用例→蛇用例),这可以帮助开发人员在实践中解决样式更改问题。我们的研究也为研究人员和开发人员在程序中使用特定的标识符样式提供了一些提示。例如,研究者在探索标识符风格对代码理解的影响时,建议考虑个体标识符风格的不平衡分布现象。此外,对于开发人员来说,构建标识符样式更改预测和传播工具以减少样式更改成本是值得的。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
自引率
0.00%
发文量
0
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信