On the Level of Code Suggestion for Reuse

Code search techniques are well-known as one of the techniques that helps code reuse. If developers input queries that represent functionality that they want, the techniques suggest code fragments that are related to the query. Generally, code search techniques suggest code at the component level of programming language such as class or file. Due to this, developers occasionally need to search necessary code in the suggested area. As a countermeasure, there is a code search technique where code is suggested based on the past reuse. The technique ignores structural code blocks, so that developers need to add some code to the pasted code or remove some code from it. That is, the advantages and disadvantages of the former technique are disadvantages and advantages of the latter one, respectively. In this research, we have conducted a comparative study to reveal which level of code suggestion is more useful for code reuse. In the study, we also compared a hybrid technique of the two techniques with them. As a result, we revealed that component-level suggestions were able to provide reusable code more precisely. On the other hand, reuse-level suggestions were more helpful to reuse larger code.