Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations
Searching source code is a common activity in many software engineering tasks. To some extent, the quality of the query determines the accuracy of query results. In practice, it is difficult for developers to provide a high-quality query, especially for the novice who just takes over the software pr...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IEEE
2018-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Access |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8552658/ |
| _version_ | 1818331730250039296 |
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| author | Jinting Lu Ying Wei Xiaobing Sun Bin Li Wanzhi Wen Cheng Zhou |
| author_facet | Jinting Lu Ying Wei Xiaobing Sun Bin Li Wanzhi Wen Cheng Zhou |
| author_sort | Jinting Lu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Searching source code is a common activity in many software engineering tasks. To some extent, the quality of the query determines the accuracy of query results. In practice, it is difficult for developers to provide a high-quality query, especially for the novice who just takes over the software project with a short time. What is more, existing code search techniques using queries expressed in natural language offer little support to help developers determine whether the search results are relevant or not. When a query preforms poorly, it has to be reformulated. In this paper, we present a novel approach, INQRES, to interactively reformulate the search query considering the relations between words in the source code to optimize the query quality. INQRES analyzes the keyword relations in the source code and builds AND and OR relations in an interactive way for developer to select suitable words for query reformulation. To evaluate the effectiveness of INQRES, we perform an empirical study on the jEdit project. Empirical results show that INQRES can effectively reformulate the search query, and the quality of the reformulated query of INQRES is better than that of the state-of-art technique, i.e., QReformu. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-13T13:24:29Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-afe031dd8c7146c7b9ef1925dbf569aa |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-13T13:24:29Z |
| publishDate | 2018-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj.art-afe031dd8c7146c7b9ef1925dbf569aa2022-12-21T23:44:20ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362018-01-016756607566810.1109/ACCESS.2018.28839638552658Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word RelationsJinting Lu0Ying Wei1Xiaobing Sun2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5165-5080Bin Li3Wanzhi Wen4Cheng Zhou5School of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, ChinaSchool of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, ChinaSchool of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, ChinaSchool of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, ChinaSchool of Computer Science and Technology, Nantong University, Nantong, ChinaSchool of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, ChinaSearching source code is a common activity in many software engineering tasks. To some extent, the quality of the query determines the accuracy of query results. In practice, it is difficult for developers to provide a high-quality query, especially for the novice who just takes over the software project with a short time. What is more, existing code search techniques using queries expressed in natural language offer little support to help developers determine whether the search results are relevant or not. When a query preforms poorly, it has to be reformulated. In this paper, we present a novel approach, INQRES, to interactively reformulate the search query considering the relations between words in the source code to optimize the query quality. INQRES analyzes the keyword relations in the source code and builds AND and OR relations in an interactive way for developer to select suitable words for query reformulation. To evaluate the effectiveness of INQRES, we perform an empirical study on the jEdit project. Empirical results show that INQRES can effectively reformulate the search query, and the quality of the reformulated query of INQRES is better than that of the state-of-art technique, i.e., QReformu.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8552658/Source-code Searchquery reformulationword relationsinteractive search |
| spellingShingle | Jinting Lu Ying Wei Xiaobing Sun Bin Li Wanzhi Wen Cheng Zhou Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations IEEE Access Source-code Search query reformulation word relations interactive search |
| title | Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations |
| title_full | Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations |
| title_fullStr | Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations |
| title_short | Interactive Query Reformulation for Source-Code Search With Word Relations |
| title_sort | interactive query reformulation for source code search with word relations |
| topic | Source-code Search query reformulation word relations interactive search |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8552658/ |
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