Re: McCabe package for Ada?

[sparky!sparky!dwb@uunet.uu.net (David Boyd)]

In article <C7AIDs.K3@crdnns.crd.ge.com>, groleau@e7sa.crd.ge.com (Wes Groleau
X7574) writes:

|> P.S. One thing McCabe doesn't show is what I call "hidden" complexity.
|> Hidden, because it doesn't show on a flow chart or path graph.  This kind of
|> complexity is produced by a technique more than one of my former colleagues
|> was fond of:  That of declaring lots of "flag" variables, and using them to
|> control branching at a point far away from where they were set.  I'd like
|> to see someone come up with a McCabe-like metric where if dotted lines are
|> drawn on a control graph connecting the setting of one of these flags with
|> all tests that depend on that setting, the metric would be affected by 
|> these lines and their nodes.  Whew! What's the complexity metric of that
|> last
|> sentence?!?!? 
|> 
	Actually the McCabe folks have come up with some metrics for just
that situation.  The first is global data complexity (gv(G)) which 
calculates the number of paths through a module which touch global data.
Another metric is user data complexity (uv(G)) which looks at the 
complexity of a module with respect to a single user data element.  Both
of these are extremely usefull to me both from a quality analysis point of
view as well as from a maintenance point of view.  This is especially
usefull if a tool will display the flow graph of all functions which
reference a data element and highlight the paths which reference the
element.  This would make it extremely easy to determine what tests needed
to be run when a given variable changes.

	Another complexity measure they came up with is pathological complexity
 (pv(G))
which measures those truely awfull conditions in code
such as branches into loops or decisions.  You know the stuff you shoot
people for or would only expect from a 10 year olds first program.
-- 
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