Academic research and latest progress in Java function comparison

Function comparison is an important task to compare the similarity of functions and has a wide range of applications. Academic research progress includes traditional methods based on structural comparison and modern methods using machine learning techniques, such as NLP and GNN. Recent advances also include NLP-based methods, GNN-based methods, and multi-modal methods. An AST-based Java function comparison example uses an AST tree to compare function structural similarity, which can be achieved through a comparator.

Java Function Comparison: Academic Research and Latest Progress

Introduction

Function comparison is a commonly used method in computer science for the important task of comparing functional similarities. It is critical in a variety of applications, including software testing, code clone detection, and machine learning.

Academic Research

The research on function comparison has a long history, and the earliest academic papers can be traced back to the 1960s. Initial approaches were mainly based on structural comparisons such as Abstract Syntax Trees (AST) and Control Flow Graphs (CFG).

Recent academic research has focused on the use of machine learning techniques such as natural language processing (NLP) and graph neural networks (GNN). These techniques learn representations of functions, enabling them to perform more complex comparisons.

Latest progress

The latest progress includes:

• NLP-based method:Using word embedding technology to function Text representations are learned.
• GNN-based method: Treat functions as graphs and apply GNN to extract structural and semantic information.
• Multi-modal approach: Combine multiple input modes such as AST, NLP and GNN to improve accuracy.

Practical case

Consider two Java functions in the following code:

// 函数 1
public static int sum(int[] arr) {
    int sum = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
        sum += arr[i];
    }
    return sum;
}

// 函数 2
public static int[] reverse(int[] arr) {
    int[] newArr = new int[arr.length];
    for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
        newArr[arr.length - i - 1] = arr[i];
    }
    return newArr;
}

Comparison method

We can compare these two functions using AST based approach as follows:

import java.util.List;

class ASTComparator {

    public boolean compareASTs(Node a, Node b) {
        if (a.getType() != b.getType()) {
            return false;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < a.getChildren().size(); i++) {
            if (!compareASTs(a.getChildren().get(i), b.getChildren().get(i))) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }

}

In the given example, ASTComparator returns true, Because the AST structure of the two functions is the same.

Conclusion

Function comparison is an active research area in computer science, and academic research and recent advances continue to drive progress in the field. Machine learning-based methods and multimodal methods are the most promising directions for improving function comparison accuracy.

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