Detecting similarity of R functions via a fusion of multiple heuristic methods

Abstract

In this paper we describe recent advances in our R code similarity detection algorithm. We propose a modification of the Program Dependence Graph (PDG) procedure used in the GPLAG system that better fits the nature of functional programming languages like R. The major strength of our approach lies in a proper aggregation of outputs of multiple plagiarism detection methods, as it is well known that no single technique gives perfect results. It turns out that the incorporation of the PDG algorithm significantly improves the recall ratio, i.e. it is better in indicating true positive cases of plagiarism or code cloning patterns. The implemented system is available as web application at http://SimilaR.Rexamine.com/.