Hacker News

Show HN: CLI tool for detecting non-exact code duplication with embedding models

39 points by rkochanowski ago | 13 comments

rkochanowski |next [-]

I built Slopo to solve one specific problem: finding similar code that is hardest to detect by other tools, coding AI agents, and humans.

It finds similar-looking code with embeddings. This detects more than just copy-paste clones or even clones with minor changes. Similar code is often not a clone to refactor, and this is a trade-off. Initial results need to be verified, but coding agents can do this quickly. Example prompts are available on https://slopo.dev

Additionally, similar code distant in the codebase is ranked higher to focus on less obvious duplication.

The results differ a lot depending on the codebase. I noticed that sometimes most of the detected duplicates are false positives, but the remaining ones are strong candidates to refactor or even bugs. Sometimes it reveals much more real duplication.

realxrobau |root |parent [-]

If it did PHP I would love to run it over WordPress. What would it take to add that?

rkochanowski |root |parent [-]

PHP support can be easily added, I will release a new version soon.

raro11 |root |parent [-]

Thank you

BrandiATMuhkuh |next |previous [-]

What a simple and smart idea. Wonderful

forhadahmed |next |previous [-]

self plug (for similar tool): https://github.com/forhadahmed/refactor

philajan |next |previous [-]

This is neat. Have you noticed any difference in duplicate detection between strongly typed and loosely typed languages / code bases?

rkochanowski |root |parent [-]

No. It depends the most on general code quality and architecture. Some implementations require more code similarity by design. Some languages, like Java, may tend to have more duplication, but it's only a theoretical guess. It also depends on what kind of software is developed with what language.

If you are interested in data, you can check my article. Analysis was done with this tool, but a previous version where exact-copy duplicates were excluded from analysis. https://rkochanowski.com/article/analysis-code-duplication/

murats |next |previous [-]

Nice idea. I can see this being useful before refactors, especially when the duplication is semantic rather than copy paste.

hdz |next |previous [-]

Very nice. I can imagine putting this into a pre push hook to keep things clean after an initial sweep.

NYCHMPAI |next |previous [-]

[flagged]

SpyCoder77 |previous [-]

I think that this is pretty cool, but is there any reason why we would want to remove similar/possible duplicate code?

rufius |root |parent |next [-]

(without sarcasm) Is this a serious question?

If so - maintainability, testability. This is old software engineering best practice at this point.

You shouldn’t hyper optimize for deduplication, but it’s usually worth considering. Fewer places to fix issues or improve as well.

Zopieux |root |parent |previous [-]

Have you written software before?