in reply to general advice finding duplicate code

to now manually unravel the duplication by hand

This is a classic refactoring problem. The amount of duplication doesn't matter, you simply go file by file, and re-write each file to be modular, using the appropriate amount of abstraction.

By the time you're on file 20 (of 500), you'll know if possible (and worth the effort ) to refactor all 55k lines of code, or start from scratch.

If this were perl, I would say use B::Xref to generate a graph, and then look for cycles ...

Or if the code is at all modular, use autodia and/or GraphViz::ISA to get a picture

surely php has something similar, maybe :)

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Re^2: general advice finding duplicate code
by armstd (Friar) on Jun 22, 2011 at 04:47 UTC

    I gotta agree with this one. 55k LOC really isn't that much. If you have a duplication problem, you probably have a factoring problem.

    Refactoring the code will not only help eliminate your duplication issue, but will also teach you what the code is doing, and result in a much better end result than simply eliminating duplication.

    Eliminating the trivial copy/pastes is a good start though, anything that helps maintainability will buy time for refactoring, helping others avoid making the problem worse while you race to make it better.

    --Dave

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