A Review on Software Code Clones and Tools and Techniques Available to Handle Them

Abstract

Code duplication or code fragment copying and using it again by either pasting it through modification or without modification is a known form of code smell in the maintenance of software. This is known as code clones and is a factor which makes maintenance of software much difficult. A noteworthy drawback which is major, is of this duplicated fragment, if searching of a bug is done in a fragment of code, several former alike type of fragments to it should then be investigated so as to verify possible form of existence as the similar bug in same fragments. Refactoring of code of duplicated form is some other prime problem in maintenance of software although many kind of studies claim that few clones refactoring aren’t advantageous also there is a risk present. In this paper, we survey the state of art in research for detection of clone, various ideas, ways, tools for clone detection, research related to it on the case study of code clone.