Application of the Accessibility Analysis Technique for Detection of Dead Methods in Object-Oriented Software

• Camila Bastos UFLA
• Paulo Afonso Júnior UFLA
• Heitor Costa UFLA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbqs.2016.15127

Abstract

Modifications performed during the software life cycle contribute for increasing code complexity and pollution. The presence of dead code favors such pollution making it difficult to trace requirements, to run tests, and to read and to understand source code. To detect and to remove dead code are arduous processes and depend on analyzing and understanding of source code. Thus, the reachability analysis technique has been applied to verify the method calls triggered from software initialization methods to identify unreachable methods (dead code). A limitation of this verification is the reliance on prior knowledge of software to determine your initialization methods. This work proposes an application of reachability analysis technique, which eliminates the need for prior knowledge and detects unreachable methods in object-oriented software. Experimental results indicate that this proposal can detect larger amount of unreachable methods in relation to a consolidated tool.

Keywords: Accessibility, Software, Dead Methods

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