Is there a correlation between complexity and reachability?

Posted by Saladin Akara on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Saladin Akara
Published on 2011-11-17T17:44:29Z Indexed on 2011/11/17 18:07 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 245

Filed under:

complexity

|

code-analysis

I've been studying cyclomatic complexity (McCabe) and reachability of software at uni recently. Today my lecturer said that there's no correlation between the two metrics, but is this really the case?

I'd think there would definitely be some correlation, as less complex programs (from the scant few we've looked at) seem to have 'better' results in terms of reachability.

Does anyone know of any attempt to look at the two metrics together, and if not, what would be a good place to find data on both complexity and reachability for a large(ish) number of programs?

(As clarification, this isn't a homework question. Also, if I've put this in the wrong place, let me know.)

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about complexity

Linear complexity and quadratic complexity

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm just not sure... If you have a code that can be executed in either of the following complexities: A sequence of O(n), like for example: two O(n) in sequence O(n²) The preferred version would be the one that can be executed in linear time. Would there be a time such that the sequence… >>> More
When should complexity be removed?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice. But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design patterns you will introduce some complexity as features and requirements are added or changed to keep… >>> More
Using Completed User Stories to Estimate Future User Stories

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
In Scrum/Agile, the complexity of a user story can be estimated in story points. After completing some user stories, a programmer or team of programmers can use those experiences to better estimate how much time it might take to complete a future user story. Is there a methodology for breaking down… >>> More
Finding complexity of a program as a service [on hold]

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I would like to find the complexity of a specific code chunk written in Java. Is there a place/web site/service where I can find out the complexity of any arbitrary program. This program might include loops/recursion. Using theory we can compute complexity ourselves. But, just curious in finding… >>> More
Form, function and complexity in rule processing

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding… >>> More

Related posts about code-analysis

Visual Studio 2013 Static Code Analysis in depth: What? When and How?

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
In this post I'll illustrate in details the following points What is static code analysis? When to use? Supported platforms Supported Visual Studio versions How to use Run Code Analysis Manually Run Code Analysis Automatically Run Code Analysis while check-in source… >>> More
Using the Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio (Premium/Ultimate) to find memory leakage problems

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Memory for managed code is handled by the garbage collector, but if you use any kind of unmanaged code, like native resources of any kind, open files, streams and window handles, your application may leak memory if these are not properly handled. To handle such resources the classes that own these… >>> More
Actionscript code analysis?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I want to see class, function and variable/property, dependencies visually, like NDepend, but for ActionScript 2 or AS3 code. Any programs or ideas? (Use Doxygen in some way?, FlexUnit?) >>> More
Code analysis: Global project/assembly suppression

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have several CA1704:IdentifiersShouldBeSpelledCorrectly warnings that I want to suppress. Basically they refer to the company name which is deemed to be spelled incorrectly. The company name is part of several namespaces in my project, and in order to suppress all the warnings I need to add a lot… >>> More
Having trouble running code analysis from command prompt with msbuild

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm using VS2010 RC while targeting .NET 3.5. I can run code analysis via Visual Studio without a problem. However, when I try to run code analysis on our CI server it isn't getting executed. When I attempt to build using msbuild 4.0 I get the following exception: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10… >>> More