Can I use it to detect Copy & Paste within my company's own codebase?
Jetbrains IDEs will flag duplicate code of N lines (configurable) or more. Just run the inspection manually and there you go. You can even do it in batch in CI nowadays.
JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A user study shows that graduate student assistants consistently rate Mossad-generated code as just as readable as authentic student code. Do you have any small examples on a program that was transformed/generated with Mossad that we could compare against the original? As far as I can tell, the paper just have a really tiny example function.
An example of a Mossad generated file would be the source file plus a bunch of dead code. The dead code consists of lines from the original file repeated in random locations (plus, if you are using an "entropy file", random lines of code that were successful mutations from previous generations of Mossad). As it turns out, a lot of student code can look this way anyway. Something crazy like 70% of authentic student co…
How would that pass in the user study? Did the people reviewing the code fail to see dead code scattered across random locations? Feels like it would be obvious as soon as you opened the file.
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
An example of a Mossad generated file would be the source file plus a bunch of dead code. The dead code consists of lines from the original file repeated in random locations (plus, if you are using an "entropy file", random lines of code that were successful mutations from previous generations of Mossad). As it turns out, a lot of student code can look this way anyway. Something crazy like 70% of authentic student co…
How would that pass in the user study? Did the people reviewing the code fail to see dead code scattered across random locations? Feels like it would be obvious as soon as you opened the file.
It would certainly depend to some degree on the complexity of the assignment. But it's also not that unusual for legitimate, non-plagiarized submissions to have dead code.
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#54Is this also effective at detecting code duplication within a codebase?
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#55I was actually looking for something like this a few days ago!
There’s an open source tool which I love the idea of (basically a tool for declarative integration tests), but I really don’t like it’s implementation. I tried to contribute to improve it, but it’s too much work and it will never fit my ideal.
So I basically decided to "redo it but better", and I’m also tempted to make it a paid, proprietary tool because my implementation diverges enough that I consider it a different codebase altogether (and it would bring legitimate value to companies). I wrote my code from scratch but still had some knowledge of the original code base so I’d be interested in running something like JPlag to make sure I didn’t accidentally plagiarize open source code.
I hope I find a way to make it compare 2 codebases :)
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#56One of the key outcomes of my master's thesis was the development of an extendable solution for Code Clone Detection (CCD), primarily focused on code and tested with undergraduates at my university [1]. Although I didn't have time to complete the adapter for JPlag, I believe it would be highly beneficial. Interestingly, whenever I discussed my thesis, the first reaction from others often revolved around moral concern…
This looks cool, but for me one of the big wins with JPlag is that I just download and run a single JAR file.
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would that pass in the user study? Did the people reviewing the code fail to see dead code scattered across random locations? Feels like it would be obvious as soon as you opened the file.
It would certainly depend to some degree on the complexity of the assignment. But it's also not that unusual for legitimate, non-plagiarized submissions to have dead code.
Sure, but is it not unusual to have "dead code consisting of lines from the original file repeated in random locations"? That would certainly stick out in any other environment (like a professional one).
I didn't study anything related to computers/software/programming in school, so I don't know what level is expected. But if I was tutoring someone and they handed me something with dead code in random locations in it, it would certainly catch my attention.
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be surprised. Many students who use ChatGPT for assignments end up turning in code identical (or nearly identical) to other students who use ChatGPT.
Surprising because you get different answers each time you ask ChatGPT.
ChatGPT answers don't differ that much without being prompted to do so
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A user study shows that graduate student assistants consistently rate Mossad-generated code as just as readable as authentic student code. Do you have any small examples on a program that was transformed/generated with Mossad that we could compare against the original? As far as I can tell, the paper just have a really tiny example function.
An example of a Mossad generated file would be the source file plus a bunch of dead code. The dead code consists of lines from the original file repeated in random locations (plus, if you are using an "entropy file", random lines of code that were successful mutations from previous generations of Mossad). As it turns out, a lot of student code can look this way anyway. Something crazy like 70% of authentic student co…
I'm surprised that large amounts of dead code is neither an obvious-to-machines nor an obvious-to-humans problem or demerit with submitted assignments -- regardless of plagiarism status. I'd especially have thought such a clunky approach should be caught be a decent plagiarism detection software. It makes me wonder if simply feeding a student's assignment into Claude would be more reliable these days by just asking it, "If you remove all the dead code, is the remaining code likely plagiarized?"
Re: JPlag – Detecting Software Plagiarism
#60It's funny how we drill the idea that everything must be reimplemented from first principles into students, only to flip that when they join the workforce.
> It's funny how we drill the idea that everything must be reimplemented from first principles into students, only to flip that when they join the workforce.
It is funny, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
PS If the domain in your profile is supposed to be valid … it isn’t.