Potpourri module detection

Abstract

A potpourri module is a module that provides more than one service to a program. This form of module violates the idea of a module as a 'responsibility assignment.' The existence of this form of module considerably increases the effort that a programmer has to expend on a software maintenance operation, and it increases the likelihood of an error being introduced into a program as a result of maintenance work. Techniques are presented for detecting potpourri modules that appear in programs written in a language that contains a module construct (such as Ada and Modula-2). Many of these techniques can be automated.<>