Discovering power laws in computer programs
The power-law regularities have been discovered behind many complex natural and social phenomenons. We discover that the power-law regularities, especially the Zipfs and Heaps laws, also exist in large-scale software systems. We find that the distribution of lexical tokens in modern Java, C++ and C programs follows ZipfMandelbrot law, and the growth of program vocabulary follows Heaps law. The results are obtained through empirical analysis of real-world software systems. We believe our discovery reveals the statistical regularities behind computer programming.
power-law heaps law zipfmandelbrot law zipfs law infometric software metric