ABC Software Metric

The ABC software metric was introduced by Jerry Fitzpatrick in 1997 to overcome the drawbacks of the <a href="/facts/Source_lines_of_code/eHbXB39X">LOC</a>. 
The metric defines an ABC score as a triplet of values that represent the size of a set of source code statements. An ABC score is calculated by counting the number of <a href="/facts/Assignment_(computer_science)/kLevAoyJ">assignments</a> (A), number of <a href="/facts/Branch_(computer_science)/obBGrnor">branches</a> (B), and number of <a href="/facts/Conditional_(computer_programming)/8gDQTqUD">conditionals</a> (C) in a program. ABC score can be applied to individual <a href="/facts/Method_(computer_programming)/8kAXxVYs">methods</a>, <a href="/facts/Function_computer_science/9vFJrg0A">functions</a>, <a href="/facts/Class_(computer_programming)/zvzkSAtE">classes</a>, <a href="/facts/Modular_programming/sNoqKvRD">modules</a> or <a href="/facts/File_(computing)/FjFH3Ufm">files</a> within a program.
ABC score is represented by a <a href="/facts/3d_vector/bCLrdksy">3-D vector</a> < Assignments (A), Branches (B), Conditionals (C) >. It can also be represented as a <a href="/facts/Scalar_(mathematics)/MkDbA4Eo">scalar</a> value, which is the <a href="/facts/Magnitude_(mathematics)/KCn9PoF0">magnitude</a> of the vector < Assignments (A), Branches (B), Conditionals (C) >, and is calculated as follows:

|
 
 <
 
 A
 B
 C
 v
 e
 c
 t
 o
 r
 
 >
 
 |
 
 =
 √
 (
 
 A
 
 2
 
 
 +
 
 B
 
 2
 
 
 +
 
 C
 
 2
 
 
 )
 
 
 {\displaystyle |<\mathrm {ABCvector} >|=\surd (A^{2}+B^{2}+C^{2})}

By convention, an ABC magnitude value is rounded to the nearest tenth.

ABC Software Metric open-in-new

ABC Software Metric