Supporting Programmers in
Naming Identifiers
Surafel Lemma Abebe and Paolo Tonella
Software Engineering Research Unit
Fondazione Bruno Kessler
Trento, Italy
TAinSM 2012
Motivation
V1.0
V2.0
V3.0
V4.0
V?
What name
shall I give
to this
identifier?
2
Identifier Name Suggestion
• Candidate name suggestion
• Completion
• Replacement
Example:
server
Example:
file
Example:
message
{content, subject
matter, substance}
Prefix
Ontological
relation
Synonyms
Ontology
Term list
Candidate
sentence
Sentence
selection
Concept and
relation extraction
3
Identifier Name Suggestion…
• Prioritizing candidates
– “Relevance” to a context (X)
– Example: X= {mail, sender}
4
GUI Requirements and Evaluation
• Reenacting possible activity of developers
– Success rate: probability of getting correct
suggestions
– Average rank: average rank of top concept in a
successful suggestion
5
Thank you!
6