looks like will only identify duplicated but individual lines of code across the scripts

Every approach is this approach :) its like a search engine

You iterate over you files, and you index each file

To index, you pick a unit (ex one word, or three adjacent lines of code)

Generate a list of all units for a file

Normalize each unit. For words you would stem (remove prefix/suffix..) to find the root, for lines you would remove insignificant whitespace, insignificant commas... normalize quoting characters...

Hash each unit (sha1), and associate all this in a database

Then, to find duplication, query the database to find duplicate hashes

This is not unlike what git (git gc) does, so I wouldn't be surprised if git provides provided a tool to help you visualize these duplications, although I don't know of one

It goes without saying before making code changes, you need a comprehensive test suite :)

In reply to Re^2: general advice finding duplicate code by Anonymous Monk
in thread general advice finding duplicate code by aquarium

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.