Complexity in program schemes
Giovanni Cantone, Aniello Cimitile, Lucia Sansone · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 1983
The criteria and the metrics of evaluation of programs derived from th e the studies of complexity on the schemes (Mc Cabe) and those connected wit h the "Software Science" (Healstead) do not consider the control environment s present in the program,their quality (cycles,selections,seriations) and nesting .From this follow objective limits in the evaluation of program complexity,so that proposal of new criteria and metrics keep appearing in the literature /1/,/2/,/3/ .This paper offers a contribution in this sense ; It i s internal to the studies of complexity on the schemes and takes into accoun t the structural characteristics of the control flow of a program and th e number of its possible executions .Above all we look for a relation betwee n the Control Environments used in a program and the complexity that thei r nestin g induces in it .We arrive to the definition of criteria to associate to each program a "characteristic polynomial" which synthetizes several aspects of complexity . Research partially supported ip P .finistry of Italy .