Syntax patterns: more statistics.

[Tom Ball]

It is indeed good work, but like all metrics, these measurements need
to be treated as rough indicators rather than firm values.  The
Jackpot project (an automated refactoring tool) had a rule to change
if statements to conditional expressions -- it found a lot of
candidates, but most were rejected by developers using the tool.  When
asked, developers gave readability as the primary concern, stating
that it was worth some verbiage to make the code easier to read.  My
hunch is that a lot of potential elvis uses will be rejected for
similar reasons.

Tom

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Stephen Colebourne
<scolebourne at joda.org> wrote:
> 2009/4/20 Ruslan Shevchenko <Ruslan at shevchenko.kiev.ua>:
>> Main changes from previous post are:
>>  - added counts for 'if' syntax constructions, so we can say, hom many
>>  percents of if's can be eliminated by elvis operator ( [4-5]%)
>>  - added counts for 'catch' syntax constructions, so we can say that
>> multicath eliminate 6-8% of all catch clauses.
>>  - added count for big integers integers (where undescore can be
>> applicable, I guess this is x: x > 100000 || x < -10000) and for all
>> integer literals.
>>   (underscore can be applicable to near 1%)
>>  - added count for object-switch proposal by Ulf Zibis (refining, that
>> Left/Right part of expressions are first operand in equalirty expression
>> or object in method call)
>>  - added count for rethrow proposal by Mark Mahieu (near 50% of all
>> catches in some packages (!) ).
>>  - added count for catches inside finally block. (Is this is a real
>> problem [?]).
>
> Good work, and some interesting figures - multi-catch and elvis are
> both higher than I would have guessed.
>
> Stephen
>
>