White Box – Cyclomatic complexity

What is the cyclomatic complexity of a program?

Cyclomatic complexity of a program tells us the quantitative measure of the complexity of a program.

cyclomatic complexoty of a graph
Figure: the Cyclomatic complexity of a graph

How to calculate Cyclomatic complexity?

There are three methods;

  1. Count the number of regions on the graph: 4
  2. No of edges – no. of nodes + 2: 11-9+2=4
  3. No. of predicates + 1 : 3+1=4

What are independent paths?

Independent path is a path that has at least one edge that has not been traversed before in the given graph.

Here;

Independent paths are;

1, 9

1, 2, 3, 8, 1, 9

1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 1, 9

1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 1, 9

What is the use of finding graph complexity and finding paths?

It is used in software testing.