Halstead Difficulty

Since R2024a

Metric ID

slcomp.HalsteadDifficulty

Description

The Halstead complexity metrics measure the size and complexity of code, which can help you monitor code quality, identify complex areas in the design, and address software maintainability concerns. One of the Halstead complexity metrics is Halstead difficulty. Halstead difficulty is an estimate of how difficult the code is to read and write, calculated based on the number of total and unique operators and operands in the design.

Use this metric to calculate the overall Halstead difficulty of MATLAB^® code, Stateflow^® charts, and Simulink^® designs.

The overall Halstead difficulty is equal to the sum of the:

Supported Artifacts

You can collect this metric for:

To control what the dashboard classifies as a unit or component, see Categorize Models in Hierarchy as Components or Units.

Computation Details

The metric:

Ignores control-flow complexity
Ignores branches and jumps

Collection

To collect data for this metric, execute the metric engine and use getMetrics with the metric ID slcomp.HalsteadDifficulty.

metric_engine = metric.Engine;
execute(metric_engine,"slcomp.HalsteadDifficulty");
results = getMetrics(metric_engine,"slcomp.HalsteadDifficulty")

Results

The metric returns results for each unit and component in the project.

For each unit and component, the metric returns a metric.Result object with properties including:

Value — Overall Halstead complexity for the unit or component
Scope — Structure with information about the unit or component