Reference : Augmenting and Structuring User Queries to Support Efficient Free-Form Code Search

	Document type :	Reports : Expert report
	Discipline(s) :	Engineering, computing & technology : Computer science
	Focus Areas :	Computational Sciences
	To cite this reference:	http://hdl.handle.net/10993/30408

Title :	Augmenting and Structuring User Queries to Support Efficient Free-Form Code Search
Language :	English
Author, co-author :	Sirres, Raphael [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT)]
	Bissyande, Tegawendé François D Assise [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > >]
	Kim, Dongsun [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > >]
	Lo, David [Singapore Management University]
	Klein, Jacques [University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC) >]
	Le Traon, Yves [University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication (FSTC) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC) >]
Publication date :	2017
Keywords :	[en] Code search ; GitHub ; Free-form search
Abstract :	[en] Source code terms such as method names and variable types are often different from conceptual words mentioned in a search query. This vocabulary mismatch problem can make code search inefficient. In this paper, we present Code voCABUlary (CoCaBu), an approach to resolving the vocabulary mismatch problem when dealing with free-form code search queries. Our approach leverages common developer questions and the associated expert answers to augment user queries with the relevant, but missing, structural code entities in order to improve the performance of matching relevant code examples within large code repositories. To instantiate this approach, we build GitSearch, a code search engine, on top of GitHub and StackOverflow Q\&A data. We evaluate GitSearch in several dimensions to demonstrate that (1) its code search results are correct with respect to user-accepted answers; (2) the results are qualitatively better than those of existing Internet-scale code search engines; (3) our engine is competitive against web search engines, such as Google, in helping users complete solve programming tasks; and (4) GitSearch provides code examples that are acceptable or interesting to the community as answers for StackOverflow questions.
Permalink :	http://hdl.handle.net/10993/30408

	File(s) associated to this reference
	Fulltext file(s): File Commentary Version Size Access Open access cocabu_emse.pdf Author preprint 13.37 MB View/Open

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