Similarity in Programs

Abstract

An overview of the concept of program similarity is presented. It divides similarity into two types - syntactic and semantic - and provides a review of eight categories of methods that may be used to measure program similarity. A summary of some applications of these methods is included. The paper is intended to be a starting point for a more comprehensive analysis of the subject of similarity in programs, which is critical to understand if progress is to be made in fields such as clone detection.