Computer Engineering Commons^™

Solving The Search For Source Code, Kathryn T. Stolee

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Programmers frequently search for source code to reuse using keyword searches. When effective and efficient, a code search can boost programmer productivity, however, the search effectiveness depends on the programmer's ability to specify a query that captures how the desired code may have been implemented. Further, the results often include many irrelevant matches that must be filtered manually. More semantic search approaches could address these limitations, yet existing approaches either do not scale, are not flexible enough to find approximate matches, or require complex specifications.

We propose a novel approach to semantic search that addresses some of these limitations and …