A multilanguage complexity measurement tool for code quality assessment of software using cyclomatic complexity approach

Abstract

Code complexity or quality has been a focus point by software stakeholders, and on several occasions, has led to the abandonment of codes that has consumed time and money to develop. However, tools that measure code complexity and predict future maintenance across some development platforms before deployment are inadequate. This study was designed to develop a Complexity Measurement Tool (CMT) for assessing code quality in different platforms and compare its performance with that of an existing complexity tool. McCabe cyclomatic complexity approach was adopted and the CMT was developed using C# language to support four programming languages: C, C++, C# and JavaScript. The tool adopted source codes written in any of the above-mentioned programming languages as input, scanned through and reported names of each method contained in the source program, their code lines, the complexity of each of the method and also specified the equivalent category of the complexity value. The performance of CMT was compared with Code Metrics (CM), an existing complexity equivalent tool embedded in Visual Studio (VS) environment using System’s Computational Time (SCT) and result representations. The average SCT obtained from CMT and CM for all the codes were 1.0±0.01 and 3.0±0.01 minutes. The complexity measurement tool with cyclomatic complexity category had better speed and result interpretation. This will assist software developers in building quality into their products. The result from the tool can also be used in making critical decisions by software stakeholders.