Last updated on Monday, October 06, 2025
@inproceedings{VanBladel2020SANER,
author = {Brent van Bladel and Serge Demeyer},
booktitle = {Proceedings {SANER 2020} (International Conference on
Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering)},
note = {Acceptance ratio: 46 / 199 = 23\%},
pages = {492--500},
publisher = {IEEE},
title = {Clone Detection in Test Code: an Empirical
Evaluation},
year = {2020},
abstract = {Duplicated test code (a.k.a. test code clones) has a
negative impact on test comprehension and
maintenance. Moreover, the typical structure of unit
test code induces structural similarity, increasing
the amount of duplication. Yet, most research on
software clones and clone detection tools is focused
on production code, often ignoring test code. In this
paper we will fill this gap by comparing four
different clone detection tools (NiCad, CPD, iClones,
TCORE) against the test code of three open-source
projects. Our analysis confirms the prevalence of
test code clones, as we observed between 23\% and
29\% test code duplication. We also show that most of
the tools suffer from false negatives (NiCad = 83\%,
CPD = 84\%, iClones = 21\%, TCORE = 65\%), which
leaves ample room for improvement. These results
indicate that further research on test clone
detection is warranted.},
annote = {internationalconference},
doi = {10.1109/SANER48275.2020.9054798},
url = {https://figshare.com/collections/
Clone_Detection_in_Test_Code_an_Empirical_Evaluation/
4710692},
}