What is the Importance of plagiarism detection system in Analyzing Source Code?

Source code analysis is in existence since programming started. Earlier there were no complex programming languages, and analyzing the same did not require much effort. However, over time, the individual analysis process emerged, and the issues about the source code plagiarism got well documented. In the face of it, many computer science institutions also acknowledged the issues that pertain to plagiarism. Many tools emerged on the scene, with many programmers starting to learn How To Use MOSS?

MOSS stands for Measure of Software Similarity. The tool does what its name says. It measures between pairs of files from a list. You submit your source code and let MOSS do the rest of the job.

MOSS uses a document fingerprinting algorithm called winnowing, which is vulnerable to noise and sound. To elaborate if any student tries to cheat by changing whitespace, variable names, or sprinkling extra statements, MOSS can still flag them for code plagiarism.

Let us understand how to use MOSS in preventing source code plagiarism.

As a new programmer, get a comprehensive understanding of plagiarism in coding. However, plagiarism is a statement that someone copied code deliberately without having to give attribution to it. While MOSS automatically detects program similarity, it cannot still tell the reasons for the similarities in code. Users still have to manually go through those parts of the code which MOSS highlights. It is a time-consuming procedure for deciding whether there is plagiarism or not.

There are three properties in the system required in the effective copy detection algorithm process.

Ignore Whitespace: The algorithm tends to ignore the meaningless syntax like whitespace. For the source-code plagiarism, algorithm detection must be unaffected by renaming variables.

Noise Suppression: A tool that matches the copied parts should be large and of importance. For instance, signaling a single work would not give a meaningful result.

Position independence: The matching segment should be positioned in a way that each should not impact the matches discovered. This means reordering the maximum blocks like functions that had minimum or no impact on the algorithm.

• The process of applying fingerprinting in plagiarism detection is deciphered into four steps:
• Pre-process the documents to remove the irrelevant traits like whitespace and identifiers
• Create a sequence of hashes with k-grams of the pre-processed document.
• Choose a subset of hashes for use to match the respective documents.
• Document pairing where a maximum number of matching fingerprints are highlighted for the professors to review.

Besides these requirements, there are many other features like quick runtime while operating on long documents and a low rate of positives. Besides creators of MOSS also uses a different copy-detection algorithm known as document fingerprinting for copy detecting that includes a set of hashes that are pre-computed for documents. The process tool compares each substring between the fingerprints which helps in reducing the number of comparisons.

With all the hype surrounding machine learning these days, MOSS performance is well accepted. The main advantage of plagiarism detection and tool and the winnowing algorithm is its simple functioning making it more interpreting. You can easily match fingerprints to the source making your instructors analyze the copying methods and find discrepancies if any.

However, now you have an advanced version of the MOSS code, and that’s Codequiry. If you are enthusiastic about learning How To Use MOSS code, you also will be excited about this upgraded version of plagiarism detection, it has more advanced features and is developed to overcome the drawbacks in MOSS. Codequiry is customized for the code checkers for more detailed checking. Users are empowered to choose a list of different checks, what they want to examine, depending on the situation. If the user wants to get into depth in checking, you get that specific option. The advanced engine gives more control and precision specific to the situation.

Read More: How Does The Python Plagiarism Checker Help The To Avoid Plagiarism