Evaluating software complexity measures

Abstract

A set of properties of syntactic software complexity measures is proposed to serve as a basis for the evaluation of such measures. Four known complexity measures are evaluated and compared using these criteria. This formalized evaluation clarifies the strengths and weaknesses of the examined complexity measures, which include the statement count, cyclomatic number, effort measure, and data flow complexity measures. None of these measures possesses all nine properties, and several are found to fail to possess particularly fundamental properties; this failure calls into question their usefulness in measuring synthetic complexity.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>