Editing Cyclomatic complexity (section)

{{Short description|Measure of the structural complexity of a software program}}
'''Cyclomatic complexity''' is a [[software metric]] used to indicate the [[Programming complexity|complexity of a program]]. It is a quantitative measure of the number of linearly independent [[path (graph theory)|path]]s through a program's [[source code]]. It was developed by [[Thomas J. McCabe, Sr.]] in 1976.

Cyclomatic complexity is computed using the [[control-flow graph]] of the program. The nodes of the [[directed graph|graph]] correspond to indivisible groups of commands of a program, and a [[directed edge]] connects two nodes if the second command might be executed immediately after the first command. Cyclomatic complexity may also be applied to individual [[function (computer science)|function]]s, [[modular programming|modules]], [[method (computer science)|method]]s, or [[class (computer science)|class]]es within a program.

One [[software testing|testing]] strategy, called [[basis path testing]] by McCabe who first proposed it, is to test each linearly independent path through the program. In this case, the number of test cases will equal the cyclomatic complexity of the program.<ref>{{cite web|
url=http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/206/Lectures/BasisPathTutorial/index.html|
title=Basis Path Testing|
author=A J Sobey}}</ref>