Detecting anomalies in the order of equally-typed method arguments
Michael Pradel, Thomas R. Gross · 2011
In statically-typed programming languages, the compiler ensures that method arguments are passed in the expected order by checking the type of each argument. However, calls to methods with multiple equally-typed parameters slip through this check. The uncertainty about the correct argument order of equally-typed arguments can cause various problems, for example, if a programmer accidentally reverses two arguments. We present an automated, static program analysis that detects such problems without any input except for the source code of a program. The analysis leverages the observation that programmer-given identifier names convey information about the semantics of arguments, which can be used to assign equally-typed arguments to their expected position. We evaluate the approach with a large corpus of Java programs and show that our analysis finds relevant anomalies with a precision of 76%.