• Journal of Software Assessment and Valuation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.35-44
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• 2018

Tools for detecting cross-language clones usually compare abstract-syntax-tree representations of source code, which lacks scalability. In order to compare large source code to a practical level, we need a similarity checking technique that works on a token level basis. In this paper, we define common tokens that represent all tokens commonly used in programming languages of different paradigms. Each source code of different language is then transformed into the list of common tokens that are compared. Experimental results using exEyes show that our proposed method using common tokens is effective in detecting cross-language clones.