Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

PMD (software)

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Repository
  
github.com/pmd/pmd

Written in
  
Java

Development status
  
Active

Operating system
  
Windows, Linux, OS X

Stable release
  
5.5.3 / 28 January 2017; 48 days ago (2017-01-28)

Type
  
Static program analysis tool

PMD is open source and a static Java source code analyzer. It uses rule-sets to define when a piece of source is erroneous. PMD includes a set of built-in rules and supports the ability to write custom rules. Typically, issues reported by PMD are not true errors, but rather inefficient code, i.e. the application could still function properly even if they were not corrected.

Contents

While PMD does not officially stand for anything, it has several unofficial names, the most appropriate probably being Programming Mistake Detector.

Features

PMD is able to detect flaws or possible flaws in source code, like:

  • Possible bugs—Empty try/catch/finally/switch blocks.
  • Dead code—Unused local variables, parameters and private methods.
  • Empty if/while statements.
  • Overcomplicated expressions—Unnecessary if statements, for loops that could be while loops.
  • Suboptimal code—Wasteful String/StringBuffer usage.
  • Classes with high Cyclomatic Complexity measurements.
  • Duplicate code—Copied/pasted code can mean copied/pasted bugs, and decreases maintainability.

    • License

    PMD is released under a BSDish license while parts of it are under Apache License 2.0 and the LGPL.

    Copy/Paste Detector (CPD)

    The Copy/Paste Detector (CPD) is an add-on to PMD that uses the Rabin–Karp string search algorithm to find duplicated code. CPD works with Java, JSP, C, C++, Fortran, PHP, and C# code.

    Plugins

    PMD has plugins for JDeveloper, Eclipse, jEdit, JBuilder, Omnicore's CodeGuide, NetBeans/Sun Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, TextPad, Maven, Ant, Gradle, Gel, JCreator, Hudson, Jenkins, SonarQube and Emacs.

    References

    PMD (software) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA