Understanding Digits in Identifier Names: An Exploratory Study
Before any software maintenance can occur, developers must read the identifier names found in the code to be maintained. Thus, high-quality identifier names are essential for productive program comprehension and maintenance activities. With developers free to construct identifier names to their liking, it can be difficult to automatically reason about the quality and semantics behind an identifier name. Studying the structure of identifier names can help alleviate this problem. Existing research focuses on studying words within identifiers, but there are other symbols that appear in identifier names– such as digits. This paper explores the presence and purpose of digits in identifier names through an empirical study of 800 open-source Java systems. We study how digits contribute to the semantics of identifier names and how identifier names that contain digits evolve over time through renaming. We envision our findings improving the efficiency of name appraisal and recommendation tools and techniques.
Sun 8 MayDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
| 08:30 - 09:40 | Paper Session 1NLBSE at NLBSE room  Chair(s): Andrea Di Sorbo University of Sannio, Sebastiano Panichella Zurich University of Applied Sciences | ||
| 08:3020m Talk | Unsupervised Extreme Multi Label Classification of Stack Overflow Posts NLBSE | ||
| 08:5020m Talk | Understanding Digits in Identifier Names: An Exploratory Study NLBSE Anthony Peruma Rochester Institute of Technology, Christian D. Newman Rochester Institute of TechnologyPre-print Media Attached | ||
| 09:1015m Talk | From Zero to Hero: Generating Training Data for Question-To-Cypher Models NLBSE | ||
| 09:2515m Talk | Automatic Identification of Informative Code in Stack Overflow Posts NLBSE Preetha Chatterjee Drexel University, USA | ||

