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An extension to the cyclomatic measure of program complexity

1977/10/01 by Glenford J. Myers
Computer Science · #Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques #Software Engineering Research #Teaching and Learning Programming

paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/954627.954633

openalex publication_date 1977/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

A recent paper has described a graph-theoretic measure of program complexity, where a program's complexity is assumed to be only a factor of the program's decision structure. However several anomalies have been found where a higher complexity measure would be calculated for a program of lesser complexity than for a more-complex program. This paper discusses these anomalies, describes a simple extension to the measure to eliminate them, and applies the measure to several programs in the literature.

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