Applicability of Lambda Expressions in Refactoring Near-Miss Micro-Clones in Java

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-787-8_49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Micro-clone; Refactoring; Lambda Expression; Java; Classification; Software Maintenance

Abstract

Duplicate code fragments, known as code clones, are a widespread phenomenon in software development, often causing difficulties in the maintenance and evolution of software systems. Micro-clones refer to short code fragments (i.e., less than five lines in length), which are particularly prevalent in the codebase. This study investigates the application of lambda expressions—a Java 8 functionality that enables the generation of concise and functional code segments, as a refactoring strategy for micro-clones. We focused and identified near-miss micro-clones of across five distinct subject systems using the NiCad clone detector. We have chosen 425 near-miss micro-clone pairs to ensure a 95% confidence level with a 5% confidence interval, based on the clone detector results for thorough investigation. Our findings indicate that 69.4% of these pairs can be refactored utilizing lambda refactoring technique. We also built a classifier using significant features based on Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon U Test results from the micro-clones that achieved 78.91% accuracy. The effectiveness of lambda expressions in minimizing repetition, enhancing maintainability, and parameterizing the small changes in behavior among micro-clone fragments was verified by their feedback. We enhance the overall understanding of refactoring techniques and offer developers real insights to optimize their code bases.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mehedi Hasan Shanto
AU  - Manishankar Mondal
AU  - Muhammad Asaduzzaman
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/17
TI  - Applicability of Lambda Expressions in Refactoring Near-Miss Micro-Clones in Java
BT  - Proceedings of the Recent Advances in Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development (RAISD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 634
EP  - 654
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-787-8_49
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-787-8_49
ID  - Shanto2025
ER  -