[Haskell-cafe] Lines of code metrics

Johannes Waldmann waldmann at imn.htwk-leipzig.de
Thu Aug 21 15:31:26 EDT 2008


> Just curious, has anybody tried to apply Halstead's code metrics [...]

As I understand it, Halstead's metric
punishes the re-use of "operands" (= variables).

This is what happens if you start your program
with a bunch of global definitions
(e.g. int i,j,k,l  because you might want them as loop indices)
that actually should be local.

This totally does not apply to Haskell:
there is no assignment, you cannot overwrite,
so indeed each operand ("variable") serves only one purpose,
as it should be.

NB: My private set of Haskell metrics:
* lines of code (per declaration) (should be <= 5)
* number of declarations (per module) (should be <= 5 as well :-)
* number of usages of Int, String, List, IO (should be <= 0 :-) :-)

Not entirely joking - J.W.



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