A measure of logical complexity of programs

Authors:
S.Sitharama Iyengar;N. Parameswaran;John Fuller
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, U.S.A.;School of Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 56001, India;Department of Computer Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, U.S.A.
Venue:
Computer Languages
Year:
1982

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Abstract

The research in software science has so far been concentrated on three measures of program complexity: (a) software effort; (b) cyclomatic complexity; and (c) program knots. In this paper we propose a measure of the logical complexity of programs in terms of the variable dependency of sequence of computations, inductive effort in writing loops and complexity of data structures. The proposed complexity mensure is described with the aid of a graph which exhibits diagrammatically the dependence of a computation at a node upon the computation of other (earlier) nodes. Complexity measures of several example programs have been computed and the related issues have been discussed. The paper also describes the role played by data structures in deciding the program complexity.