An extension to the cyclomatic measure of program complexity

Abstract

A recent paper has described a graph-theoretic measure of program complexity, where a program's complexity is assumed to be only a factor of the program's decision structure. However several anomalies have been found where a higher complexity measure would be calculated for a program of lesser complexity than for a more-complex program. This paper discusses these anomalies, describes a simple extension to the measure to eliminate them, and applies the measure to several programs in the literature.