Enumeration of structured flowcharts
Edward A. Bender, Jon T. Butler · Journal of the ACM · 1985
An analysis of structured flowcharts is presented, where size is measured by the number, n , of decision nodes (IF-THEN-ELSE and DO-WHILE nodes). For all classes of structured flowcharts considered, the number of charts is approximately, cn -3/2 γ n , for large n , where c >and γ are parameters that depend on the class. It is also shown that most large flowcharts consist of a short sequence of basic charts (IF-THEN-ELSE and DO-WHILE charts). The average length of such sequences is 2.5.