Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2020)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5518-0

Applying Halstead Software Science on Different

Programming Languages for Analyzing Software
Complexity
Nikhil Govil
Assistant Professor, Department of CEA
IET, GLA University
Mathura, India
nikhil.govil@gla.ac.in

Abstract—In software development, it is crucial that each and
every unit of effort must be measurable. If it is not measurable,
S oftware engineers must try to make it measurable. S oftware
metrics are any unit of software product measurement. S oftware
metrics have emerged as an important mechanism to find a
significant estimation of software products. This estimation
usually includes complexity, effort, size of the code, time
consumption, etc. By applying Halstead software science, we can
analyze the different complexity factors of a program. This
software science can lead us to effective technical as well as
managerial decisions. In this paper, Halstead metrics of the
program for checking for palindrome number in five different
programming languages have been taken and analysis has been
presented.
Keywords—software metrics; Halstead metrics; complexity;
estimation
I. INT RODUCT ION
A software development incorporates different phases
during the software development life cycle. Throughout the
development processes, organizations tried to fulfill the
requirements of the client(s) as well as to provide specific and
numerous characteristics [6] [7]. These characteristics can be
used to identify the overall complexity of any subsystem or
even a software product. Usually, software complexity can be
construed in terms of execution time, the effort required to
execute program(s) along with memory required to execute the
computations [5].This complexity is one of the decisive
components of the software metrics. It has been observed that
software metrics are correlated to the measurement of the
software product.
Software metrics is a measurement-based approach that is
being applied essentially to improve the overall process and
efficiency of the software products [8]. Maurice Howard
Halstead in 1977 introduced s uch a software metric which is
also known as Halstead Software Science [2] [3] [12], to
calculate the software complexity on the basis of the source
code of any subsystem or even integrated software product.
This article describes how to apply Halstead software science
to a program written in five different programming languages.
This paper also checks the program’s relative metrics and
produce an analysis on the basis of selective and crucial
parameters. The objective of this article is to analyze software
complexity in different programming languages by applying
Halstead software science. This article is structured as section 2
includes the introduction of Halstead Software Science. Section
3 comprises related work while Section 4 comprises programs
to check whether a number is a Palindrome or not in five
different programming languages as, C, C++, Java, PHP, and
python. Section 5 includes software science calculations on
various parameters that collectively define software
complexity. Section 6 comprises the results on the basis of the
analysis performed in section 5. Section 7 & 8 comprise the
conclusion and future work of this article respectively.
II. HALST EAD SOFT WARE SCIENCE
Maurice Howard Halstead was the first-ever researcher
who wrote the mathematical formulation of software metrics
[1]. His incredible research is widely used as an alternative to
counting the Lines of Code (LOC) as a measurement for
program size and software complexity. Lines of Code is
purely programming language-dependent and may vary the
moment that convert our code in any other programming
language. In such a case, Halstead software science provides a
prudent approach to calculate software size and complexity
precisely [13] [14]. To calculate software metrics, Halstead
classified the source code as either operator &/or operands
[15]. The tokens applied in this measurement are as below
[10] [11]:
The Halstead software science measures are-
K1 = number of unique operators,
K2 = number of unique operands,
N1 = total number of operators &
N2 = total number of operands.
Several measures can be further computed on the basis of
these numbers as-

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5518-0

A. Program Vocabulary ( K) of complexity. It can be identified by performing calculations

It represents the sum of unique operators and operands & on different languages by inputting the same program.
can be calculated as: Abdul Rehman Shaikh [4] demonstrated how to collect
metrics to measure effort estimation. Abdul Rehman Shaikh
K = K1 + K2 (1) discussed difficulty, effort, volume and time required to
program parameters in the article. He compares software
B. Program Length (N) metrics on three different programs on sorting.
It represents the sum of total number of operators and Rashmi Popli and Naresh Chauhan [16] discussed people
operands & can be calculated as: and project-related factors that may affect the estimation of
N = N1 + N2 (2) any project development. They estimated the computed story
points, efforts, and duration required to complete the project in
C. Program Volume (V)
an agile environment.
It is well-proportioned to total size of the program. It is
memory space required for storing the program; so it is IV. SAMPLE SOURCE CODE
represented in bits. Program volume can be computed as: This section comprises a program to check whether a
V = N * log 2 K (3) number is a Palindrome or not in five different programming
languages as, C, C++, Java, PHP, and python. Further Halstead
D. Calculated estimated program length ( software science has been applied to identify various metrics
It is the length of well-structured program & is a function related to the programs.
only of the number of unique operators and operands. It can be
calculated as: A. Program to check Palindrome in C Progrmming Langua ge
( = K1 log 2 K1 +K2 log 2 K2 (4) #include <stdio.h>
E. Difficulty (D) int main ()
{
It is the difficulty level of the program which is
int n, reverse_num = 0, remainder, original_num;
proportional to the number of the unique operator in the
printf ("Enter an integer: ");
program. It can be calculated as:
scanf ("%d", &n);
D = (K1 /2) * (N2 /K2 ) (5) original_num = n;
F. Programming Effort (E)
It is the amount of logical and mental exercise required to while (n != 0)
implement the code from pseudocode. It can be calculated as: {
E=D*V (6) remainder = n % 10;
reverse_num=reverse_num*10 + remainder;
G. Time required to program (T) n /= 10;
It is represented as a reasonable time to produce the }
program. It can be calculated as: if (original_num == reverse_num)
T= (E/E) (7) printf ("%d is a palindrome.",
original_num);
Where E is the stroud number which ranges between 5 and 20. else
However E is usually taken as 18 because this give best results printf ("%d is not a palindrome.",
in Halstead’s earliest experiments. [9] original_num);
return 0;
H. Number of delivered bugs (B) }
It is number of errors in the implementation. The number
of delivered bugs correlates with the overall complexity of the B. Program to check Palindrome in C++
software product. It can be calculated as:
B = (V/3000) (8) #include <iostream.h>
int main ()
{
III. RELAT ED WORK int n, num, digit, reverse = 0;
This section of the article identifies some of the key cout << "Enter any number: ";
research work in the area of calculating software complexity. cin >> num;
Hariprasad T et al. [2] calculated and analyzed software n = num;
complexity measures on two different programming do
languages. But in today's scenario, many programming {
languages are being used in industries widely across the globe. digit = num % 10;
So there is a need to identify which language has less amount reverse = (reverse * 10) + digit;
num = num / 10;

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5518-0

} if (Palindrome($orig inal))
while (num != 0); {
cout << " The reverse of the number is: " << reverse echo "It is a Palindrome number";
<< endl; }
if (n == reverse) else
cout << " The number is a palindrome."; {
else echo "It is not a Palindrome number";
cout << " The number is not a palindrome."; }
return 0; ?>
}
E. Program to check Palindrome in python
C. Program to check Palindrome in JAVA num=int (input(“Enter a number:”))
public class Palindrome temp=num
{ reverse=0
public static void main(String[] args) while temp !=0:
{ reverse = (reverse*10) + (temp%10)
int num = 171, reversedNum = 0, remainder, temp=temp//10
originalNum; if num==reverse:
originalNum = num; print (“It is a Palindrome number”)
while( num != 0 ) else:
{ print (“It is not a Palindrome number”)
remainder = num % 10;
reversedNum=reversedNum*10+remainder;
num /= 10; V. SOFT WARE SCIENCE CALCULAT IONS
} On the basis of source code written in different
if (originalNum == reversedNum) programming languages which are mentioned in section 3;
System.out.println(originalNum + " various Halstead metrics can be computed. These metrics
is a palindrome number."); collectively define the overall software complexity [4]. The
else Halstead software science for source codes mentioned in
System.out.println(originalNum + " section 3 are analyzed in Table 1.
is not a palindrome number.");
} TABLE I. HALSTEAD MTERICS ANALYSIS
}
S. Halstead Code Code Code Code Code
No. me trics in C in C++ in Java in PHP in
python
D. Program to check Palindrome in PHP 1 K1 21 23 27 17 16
<?php 2 K2 10 11 10 12 8
function Palindrome($number) 3 K 31 34 37 29 24
{ 4 N1 55 58 53 45 31
$temp = $number; 5 N2 27 29 26 27 20
6 N 82 87 79 72 51
$new = 0; 7 V 406.24 442.61 411.55 349.77 233.83
while (floor($temp)) 8 125.46 142.09 161.6 112.51 88
{ 9 D 28.35 30.32 35.1 19.12 20
$d = $temp % 10; 10 E 11516.9 13419.93 14445.4 6689.35 4676.6
$new = $new * 10 + $d; 11 T 639.83 745.55 802.52 371.63 259.81
12 B 0.135 0.147 0.137 0.116 0.078
$temp = $temp/10;
} VI. RESULT S
if ($new == $number)
{ All the above values mentioned in Table1, are based on
operators and operands that exists in the program(s). On the
return 1;
basis of the above analysis, it can graphically represent the
}
comparison of selective parameters such as difficulty, effort,
else time and bugs delivered. This comparison of parameters are
{ shown among all five experimented programming languages.
return 0;
} Following figure shows comparison of divergent values of
} difficulty among five different programming language. It can
be observed that the code written in Java language, has higher
$original = 171;

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5518-0
degree of difficulty while code written in PHP has less degree
of difficulty.
Fig.1. Comparision chart of Difficulty (D)
Following figure shows comparison of divergent values of
effort among five different programming language. Through
this graph, it is clear that code written in Java requires more
degree of effort while code written in python language
requires less degree of effort.
Fig.2. Comparision chart of Effort (E)
Following figure shows comparison of divergent values of
time among five different programming language. The
following graphs shows that Java code requires more time to
produce the program. On the other hand, python code requires
less time to produce the program as compared to other
programming languages.
Fig.3. Comparision chart of T ime (T )
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Following figure shows comparison of divergent values of
bugs delivered among five different programming language. It
is observed that code written in C++ language has higher
degree of number of delivered bugs. While python has less
degree of number of delivered bugs.
Fig.4. Comparision chart of Bugs Delivered (B)
VII. CONCLUSION
It has been observed that python programming language
has less difficulty, effort, the time required to program and a
number of delivered bugs as compared to the other
experimented programming languages like C, C++, Java, and
PHP. It is also observable that Java programming language
requires more effort, time as well as a higher degree of
difficulty as compared to the above mentioned experimented
programming languages. However, more number of bugs can
be delivered in case of C++ programming language while
considering the same program on different programming
languages.
VIII. FUT URE SCOPE
Our future work may incorporate the creation of a dataset
including more sets of programs in different programming
languages. These programs can be treated as inputs to the
approach so that it can produce more analyzed results with
precision.
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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2020)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP20J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5518-0

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