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C12-03 AntiCutAndPaste

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Software Profile

ID C12-03
Product AntiCutAndPaste
Company ACNP Software
Web Site http://www.anticutandpaste.com
Software Type Desktop
Costs Unlimited Use: 19.95$
Test Date 2012-02-14

Testoverview

Ranking for all tests: 15
Ranking for Source Code Test: 13
Ranking for Text Test: 15
Summary: Not Useful for Education

Summary

This system is dedicated to finding source code in programs that has be reused — however, it does not achieve the stated goal. The results are very difficult to interpret, as they announce line numbers without explaining what exactly is similar at that position. These line numbers are not absolute, but are relative to the starting point for the comparison, forcing the user to do a lot of calculations.

The system only does a textual comparison, and even that is not well done. A number of copies of code and text were not discovered at all. The default settings (and the default settings are always used for tests) only reacted to plagiarism that covered at least 8 lines — much plagiarism can be found at a much lower threshold, and an entire paragraph is considered to be a line.

The reports are said to be storable, but they are stored in a PDF with “copy protection” and large, unintelligible letters written over the report. One report obtained for a Java text was, however, for a C++ file, apparently from a previous test someone else made! And the places found were masked, so that one would have to purchase a license to see the results. An email was written to the company and access requested in order to complete the test, but all emails went unanswered.

The usability of the system was quite poor. Only one file can be uploaded at a time, it takes a long time to upload a large set of papers. It does not remember where in the folder tree one was uploading, one must click down to the directory for each file. Numerous errors were found, such as announcing errors in a line number that is larger than the last line in the file or windows without exit buttons, and it was easy to fool — changing only one word in every 8th paragraph/line caused the system to not register plagairism at all.

In summary, this system is not useful for either text and program code collusion detection at university.

Screenshots


Screenshot 1: Unclear Report


Screenshot 2: GUI

Links

official website http://www.anticutandpaste.com