# SourcererCC and SourcererCC-I: Tools to Detect Clones in Batch mode and During Software Development

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01661 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.01661/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Mar 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [A systematic literature review on source code similarity measurement and clone detection: techniques, applications, and challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16171/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Given the availability of large source-code repositories, there has been a large number of applications for large-scale clone detection. Unfortunately, despite a decade of active research, there is a marked lack in clone detectors that scale to big software systems or large repositories, specifically for detecting near-miss (Type 3) clones where significant editing activities may take place in the cloned code. This paper demonstrates: (i) SourcererCC, a token-based clone detector that targets the first three clone types, and exploits an index to achieve scalability to large inter-project repositories using a standard workstation. It uses an optimized inverted-index to quickly query the potential clones of a given code block. Filtering heuristics based on token ordering are used to significantly reduce the size of the index, the number of code-block comparisons needed to detect the clones, as well as the number of required token-comparisons needed to judge a potential clone, and (ii) SourcererCC-I, an Eclipse plug-in, that uses SourcererCC's core engine to identify and navigate clones (both inter and intra project) in real-time during software development. In our experiments, comparing SourcererCC with the state-of-the-art tools, we found that it is the only clone detection tool to successfully scale to 250 MLOC on a standard workstation with 12 GB RAM and efficiently detect the first three types of clones (precision 86% and recall 86-100%). Link to the demo: https://youtu.be/l7F_9Qp-ks4