Evaluating software complexity measures
Weyuker, E.J.
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
Volume 14, Issue 9, Sep 1988 Page(s):1357 - 1365
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/32.6178
Summary:A set of properties of syntactic software complexity measures is
proposed to serve as a basis for the evaluation of such measures. Four
known complexity measures are evaluated and compared using these
criteria. This formalized evaluation clarifies the strengths and
weaknesses of the examined complexity measures, which include the
statement count, cyclomatic number, effort measure, and data flow
complexity measures. None of these measures possesses all nine
properties, and several are found to fail to possess particularly
fundamental properties; this failure calls into question their
usefulness in measuring synthetic complexity
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