/ 
Perl-Metric-Basic-0.31
River stage zero No dependents
/ Perl::Metric::Basic

NAME

Perl::Metric::Basic - Provide basic software metrics

SYNOPSIS

# first construct a PPI::Document object to pass in
my $document = PPI::Document->load("t/lib/Acme.pm");

# then retrieve metrics on the document
my $m = Perl::Metric::Basic->new;
my $metric = $m->measure($document);

# $metric will consist of something like:
#  'Acme' => {
#    'new' => {
#      'blank_lines'      => 1,
#      'comments'         => 1,
#      'lines'            => 7,
#      'lines_of_code'    => 6,
#      'numbers'          => 0,
#      'numbers_unique'   => 0,
#      'operators'        => 3,
#      'operators_unique' => 2,
#      'symbols'          => 5,
#      'symbols_unique'   => 2,
#      'words'            => 7,
#      'words_unique'     => 6
#    },
# ...

DESCRIPTION

When constructing software one often produces code of vastly differing quality. The Perl::Metric::Basic module leverages the PPI module to provide some interesting software metrics for Perl code, mostly measuring size and maintainability.

A metric is some sort of measurement which is intended to help you make a decision about a piece of code. There aren't any hard rules about metrics, but the ones provided should allow you to make decisions about modules or subroutines which are outliers. Abnormal measurements in a subroutine are a warning sign that you should reexamine that routine, checking for unusually low quality.

This module uses the PPI module, and thus can parse Perl code without evaluating it.

If you're interested in software metrics, I highly recommend "Code Complete" (Second Edition) by Steve McConnel (Microsoft Press).

METHODS

new()

The new() method is the constructor:

my $m = Perl::Metric::Basic->new;

measure()

The measure() method measures some metrics and returns a hash reference. Files in Perl can contain more than one package, and it is interesting to seperate metrics by package. The key for the hash reference is the name of the package, and the value is another hash reference.

Perl packages are seperated into subroutines, and it is interesting to seperate metrics by subroutine. The key for the second hash reference is the name of the subroutine, and the value is another hash reference containing metrics.

There are various metrics applied to the subroutine. The key for the third hash reference is the name of the metric, and the value is the value of the metric. The metrics are:

blank_lines

The number of blank code lines.

comments

The number of lines containing comments.

lines

The total number of lines.

lines_of_code

The number of lines of code.

numbers

The total number of numbers used (eg "$z = 42 * 3" would have 2 numbers).

numbers_unique

The number of unique numbers used (eg "$z = 2*$x + 2*$y" would have 1 unique number).

operators

The total number of operators used.

operators_unique

The number of unique operators used.

symbols

The total number of symbols used (eg "$z = $x*$x + $y*$y" would have 5 symbols).

symbols_unique

The number of unique symbols used (eg "$z = $x*$x + $y*$y" would have 3 unique symbols).

words

The total number of words (operators) used.

words_unique

The number of unique words used.

NOTES

Currently the code only works for object-oriented classes, not scripts.

AUTHOR

Leon Brocard <acme@astray.com>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2004, Leon Brocard

This module is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.