Programming Languages and Compilers Commons^™

Learning Program Semantics With Code Representations: An Empirical Study, Jing Kai Siow, Shangqing Liu, Xiaofei Xie, Guozhu Meng, Yang Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Program semantics learning is the core and fundamental for various code intelligent tasks e.g., vulnerability detection, clone detection. A considerable amount of existing works propose diverse approaches to learn the program semantics for different tasks and these works have achieved state-of-the-art performance. However, currently, a comprehensive and systematic study on evaluating different program representation techniques across diverse tasks is still missed. From this starting point, in this paper, we conduct an empirical study to evaluate different program representation techniques. Specifically, we categorize current mainstream code representation techniques into four categories i.e., Feature-based, Sequence-based, Tree-based, and Graph-based program representation technique and …

Jscsp: A Novel Policy-Based Xss Defense Mechanism For Browsers, Guangquan Xu, Xiaofei Xie, Shuhan Huang, Jun Zhang, Lei Pan, Wei Lou, Kaitai Liang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To mitigate cross-site scripting attacks (XSS), the W3C group recommends web service providers to employ a computer security standard called Content Security Policy (CSP). However, less than 3.7 percent of real-world websites are equipped with CSP according to Google’s survey. The low scalability of CSP is incurred by the difficulty of deployment and non-compatibility for state-of-art browsers. To explore the scalability of CSP, in this article, we propose JavaScript based CSP (JSCSP), which is able to support most of real-world browsers but also to generate security policies automatically. Specifically, JSCSP offers a novel self-defined security policy which enforces essential confinements …

The Effect Of Using The Gamification Strategy On Academic Achievement And Motivation Towards Learning Problem-Solving Skills In Computer And Information Technology Course Among Tenth Grade Female Students, Mazyunah Almutairi, Prof. Ahmad Almassaad

International Journal for Research in Education

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the effect of using the gamification strategy on academic achievement and motivation towards learning problem-solving skills in computer and information technology course. A quasi-experimental method was adopted. The study population included tenth-grade female students in Al-Badi’ah schools in Riyadh. The sample consisted of 54 students divided into two equal groups: control group and experimental group. The study tools comprised an achievement test and the motivation scale. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the two groups in the academic achievement test in favor of the experimental group, with a large effect …

Broken External Links On Stack Overflow, Jiakun Liu, Xin Xia, David Lo, Haoxiang Zhang, Ying Zou, Ahmed E. Hassan, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Stack Overflow hosts valuable programming-related knowledge with 11,926,354 links that reference to the third-party websites. The links that reference to the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow websites extend the Stack Overflow knowledge base substantially. However, with the rapid development of programming-related knowledge, many resources hosted on the Internet are not available anymore. Based on our analysis of the Stack Overflow data that was released on Jun. 2, 2019, 14.2 percent of the links on Stack Overflow are broken links. The broken links on Stack Overflow can obstruct viewers from obtaining desired programming-related knowledge, and potentially damage the reputation of …

Eclipse, Osgi, And The Java Model, Raffi T. Khatchadourian

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Abstract Syntax Trees (Asts) And The Visitor Pattern, Raffi T. Khatchadourian

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

The Algebra Of Type Unification, Verity James Scheel

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Type unification takes type inference a step further by allowing non-local flow of information. By exposing the algebraic structure of type unification, we obtain even more flexibility as well as clarity in the implementation. In particular, the main contribution is an explicit description of the arithmetic of universe levels and consistency of constraints of universe levels, with hints at how row types and general unification/subsumption can fit into the same framework of constraints. The compositional nature of the algebras involved ensure correctness and reduce arbitrariness: properties such as associativity mean that implementation details of type inference do not leak in …

Exploiting Input Sanitization For Regex Denial Of Service, Efe Barlas, Xin Du, James C. Davis

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Web services use server-side input sanitization to guard against harmful input. Some web services publish their sanitization logic to make their client interface more usable, e.g., allowing clients to debug invalid requests locally. However, this usability practice poses a security risk. Specifically, services may share the regexes they use to sanitize input strings — and regex-based denial of service (ReDoS) is an emerging threat. Although prominent service outages caused by ReDoS have spurred interest in this topic, we know little about the degree to which live web services are vulnerable to ReDoS.

In this paper, we conduct the first black-box …

Jparsec - A Parser Combinator For Javascript, Sida Zhong

Master's Projects

Parser combinators have been a popular parsing approach in recent years. Compared with traditional parsers, a parser combinator has both readability and maintenance advantages.

This project aims to construct a lightweight parser construct library for Javascript called Jparsec. Based on the modular nature of a parser combinator, the implementation uses higher-order functions. JavaScript provides a friendly and simple way to use higher-order functions, so the main construction method of this project will use JavaScript's lambda functions. In practical applications, a parser combinator is mainly used as a tool, such as parsing JSON files.

In order to verify the utility of …

Poor Man’S Trace Cache: A Variable Delay Slot Architecture, Tino C. Moore

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

We introduce a novel fetch architecture called Poor Man’s Trace Cache (PMTC). PMTC constructs taken-path instruction traces via instruction replication in static code and inserts them after unconditional direct and select conditional direct control transfer instructions. These traces extend to the end of the cache line. Since available space for trace insertion may vary by the position of the control transfer instruction within the line, we refer to these fetch slots as variable delay slots. This approach ensures traces are fetched along with the control transfer instruction that initiated the trace. Branch, jump and return instruction semantics as well as …

Evaluating A Peer Assisted Learning Programme For Mature Access Foundation Students Undertaking Computer Programming At An Irish University, Nevan Bermingham, Frances Boylan, Barry J. Ryan

Articles

Access Foundation Programmes are a widening-participation initiative designed to encourage engagement in higher education among under-represented groups. This includes socioeconomic and educational disadvantage. Mature students in particular enrolled on these programmes experience greater difficulties making the transition to tertiary education, especially when they opt to study disciplines traditionally considered difficult. Computer programming is perceived as a traditionally difficult subject with lower pass rates and progression rates typically than other subjects.

This paper describes the first of a three-cycle action research study examining the perceived effects of a structured Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) Programme for mature students enrolled on a computer …

The 4c’S Of Pal – An Evidence-Based Model For Implementing Peer Assisted Learning For Mature Students, Nevan Bermingham, Frances Boylan, Barry J. Ryan

Articles

Peer Assisted Leaning (PAL) programmes have been shown to enhance learner confidence and have an overall positive effect on learner comprehension, particularly in subjects traditionally perceived as difficult. This research describes the findings of a three-cycle Action Research study into the perceived benefits of implementing such a programme for mature students enrolled on a computer science programming module on an Access Foundation Programme in an Irish University. The findings from this study suggest that peer learning programmes offer students a valued support structure that aids transition and acculturation into tertiary education whilst simultaneously improving their subject-matter comprehension and confidence. An …

Taming The Data In The Internet Of Vehicles, Shahab Tayeb

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

As an emerging field, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has a myriad of security vulnerabilities that must be addressed to protect system integrity. To stay ahead of novel attacks, cybersecurity professionals are developing new software and systems using machine learning techniques. Neural network architectures improve such systems, including Intrusion Detection System (IDSs), by implementing anomaly detection, which differentiates benign data packets from malicious ones. For an IDS to best predict anomalies, the model is trained on data that is typically pre-processed through normalization and feature selection/reduction. These pre-processing techniques play an important role in training a neural network to optimize …

Codematcher: Searching Code Based On Sequential Semantics Of Important Query Words, Chao Liu, Xin Xia, David Lo, Zhiwei Liu, Ahmed E. Hassan, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To accelerate software development, developers frequently search and reuse existing code snippets from a large-scale codebase, e.g., GitHub. Over the years, researchers proposed many information retrieval (IR)-based models for code search, but they fail to connect the semantic gap between query and code. An early successful deep learning (DL)-based model DeepCS solved this issue by learning the relationship between pairs of code methods and corresponding natural language descriptions. Two major advantages of DeepCS are the capability of understanding irrelevant/noisy keywords and capturing sequential relationships between words in query and code. In this article, we proposed an IR-based model CodeMatcher that …

Just-In-Time Defect Prediction On Javascript Projects: A Replication Study, Chao Ni, Xin Xia, David Lo, Xiaohu Yang, Ahmed E. Hassan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Change-level defect prediction is widely referred to as just-in-time (JIT) defect prediction since it identifies a defect-inducing change at the check-in time, and researchers have proposed many approaches based on the language-independent change-level features. These approaches can be divided into two types: supervised approaches and unsupervised approaches, and their effectiveness has been verified on Java or C++ projects. However, whether the language-independent change-level features can effectively identify the defects of JavaScript projects is still unknown. Additionally, many researches have confirmed that supervised approaches outperform unsupervised approaches on Java or C++ projects when considering inspection effort. However, whether supervised JIT defect …

Steps Before Syntax: Helping Novice Programmers Solve Problems Using The Pcdit Framework, Oka Kurniawan, Cyrille Jegourel, Norman Tiong Seng Lee, Matthieu De Mari, Christopher M. Poskitt

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Novice programmers often struggle with problem solving due to the high cognitive loads they face. Furthermore, many introductory programming courses do not explicitly teach it, assuming that problem solving skills are acquired along the way. In this paper, we present 'PCDIT', a non-linear problem solving framework that provides scaffolding to guide novice programmers through the process of transforming a problem specification into an implemented and tested solution for an imperative programming language. A key distinction of PCDIT is its focus on developing concrete cases for the problem early without actually writing test code: students are instead encouraged to think about …

A Quantum Interpretation Of Separating Conjunction For Local Reasoning Of Quantum Programs Based On Separation Logic, Xuan Bach Le, Shang-Wei Lin, Jun Sun, David Sanan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

It is well-known that quantum programs are not only complicated to write but also tedious to verify due to their enormous state-space and the sophisticated mathematics beneath. In this work, we propose a Hoare-style inference framework to verify quantum programs. We infuse separation logic in our framework and invent the $\hoarule{qframe}$ rule, the quantum counterpart of the frame rule, to support local reasoning of quantum programs. The design of our framework is planned with a mindset for intuition and human-readability, using vectors in Dirac notation for reasoning instead of the orthodox matrix representation as in existing approaches. For evaluation, we …

The Impact Of Programming Language’S Type On Probabilistic Machine Learning Models, Sherif Elsaid

Master's Projects

Software development is an expensive and difficult process. Mistakes can be easily made, and without extensive review process, those mistakes can make it to the production code and may have unintended disastrous consequences.

This is why various automated code review services have arisen in the recent years. From AWS’s CodeGuro and Microsoft’s Code Analysis to more integrated code assistants, like IntelliCode and auto completion tools. All of which are designed to help and assist the developers with their work and help catch overlooked bugs.

Thanks to recent advances in machine learning, these services have grown tremen- dously in sophistication to …

Markdown To Question & Test Interoperability, Su Kim

Master's Projects

As the classroom setting shifted to a virtual one as a result of Covid-19, numerous software are readily available to accommodate for the change, including Canvas, the online course management system. Canvas has a core feature that allows teachers to generate and administer quizzes for students through their interface, but it does not fully utilize the potential with online exams. The first step to exploring this potential is this project, known as Markdown to Question & Test Interoperability (M2QTI). Based on the QTI specifications, this tool lets users to plan and write quizzes in Markdown format. Combined with Canvas’s ability …

Applying Simulated Annealing As An Intelligent Genetic Mutation Operator For Finding Most Probable Explanations On Bayesian Belief Networks, Sahr Attia Afara

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.