Re: Comparing 2 programs...

"Dr. Tim McGuire" <tim.mcguire@wtamu.edu>
10 Oct 1998 01:06:16 -0400

          From comp.compilers

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Re: Comparing 2 programs... tim.mcguire@wtamu.edu (Dr. Tim McGuire) (1998-10-10)
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From: "Dr. Tim McGuire" <tim.mcguire@wtamu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 10 Oct 1998 01:06:16 -0400
Organization: West Texas A&M University, Computer Information Systems
References: 98-09-095 98-09-152
Keywords: tools

John Levine writes:
>[There are text comparison programs, but if there's something that can
>tell you how similar two independently written programs are, it's news
>to me. -John]


I'm coming into this a little late, not having read comp.compilers for
the past month.


The moss system is more for detecting plagiarism in programs rather
than for independently written programs, but it does work rather well.
(I used it last year when I was teaching large sections of
introductory programming students. I *encourage* my upper level
students to work together, ala the "real world".)


The URL is:


http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html


The one gripe I have is that the algorithm used is undocumented.
Obviously, they are actually parsing the programs in some fashion.


Hope this is useful.


Tim
--
Timothy J. McGuire, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Information Systems
West Texas A&M University
Mail Stop 60268
Canyon, TX 79016
(806) 651-2440 tim.mcguire@wtamu.edu


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