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I'm looking for tools that provide similarity checking of submitted program code.

Apart from the basic requirement of the tool being able to check for code similarity between submitted solutions there is one additional requirement that I am looking for: the tool should also check for code similarity between submitted code and code on internet (like on open websites such as SO or others).

I looked around and found that MOSS from Stanford is the most popular and widely used tool for code checking, but I couldn't find whether it checks for code on internet or not (all the examples of implementations only mention code similarity between two or more submitted solutions).

If there is any other tool that does this?

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    Your question 'does MOSS do internet checking' is off topic for this site - you'll have to ask elsewhere or do your own research. I'm editing your question to leave that part out. Note that I have shortened the text and added white space to make it readable - that is your homework next time. – user416 Dec 3 '14 at 10:45
  • Can you tell us why you want to do this? Or be more specific in your requirements? I was not so surer of @Ira'a answer below - but he could well be correct - the question is rather fuzzy as is. – Mawg says reinstate Monica Apr 23 '15 at 12:39
  • " I couldn't find whether it [MOSS] checks for code on internet or not" I think that moss@moss.stanford.edu can answer that better than we at S.O – Mawg says reinstate Monica Apr 24 '15 at 7:59
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You want something like BlackDuck's products. As I understand it, BD's product check to see if your software includes code from open source contexts, mostly to help you understand what software license you have implicitly chosen by using that code. I have no explicit experience with BD, and I'm not more knowledgeable on the topic, so this hardly qualifies as a good answer to your question, let alone a recommendation.

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  • I am not sure that that is a good suggestion. BalcDuck is,a s you say, used to check for use of FOSS, normally so that companies don't run into licensing problems. I think that subby is looking to see if his own code is being spread online ... or possibly top heck if student assignments are copied from the web. It *seems so to me, but bets if I ask subby to clarify ... – Mawg says reinstate Monica Apr 23 '15 at 12:37
  • OP clearly has his own opinion as to whether he likes this. Based on OP's requirements, "find similar code on the web", it does what was asked. – Ira Baxter Apr 23 '15 at 14:09
  • Hmm, does it? I don't want to start an argument, but can you point that out in more detail? I thought that I it searched code for FOSS - OP just says "search for code", which might be his own, non-FOSS, or, for instance, students' assignments (my sugegstion). He also wants a tool to search "sites like S.O" - Does BlackDuck do that? Well, let’s just wait & see what he says. If he accepts your answer, you can be sure that I will upvote it :-) – Mawg says reinstate Monica Apr 23 '15 at 14:53
  • No tool is going to search all sites, OP will have to settle for "good coverage" at best. I have no clue of BlackDuck searches SO; if I were them, I wouldn't, there really aren't vast tracts of open source code at SO (vast wastelands of "my broken code here doesn't work" maybe). I'd expect them to search GitHub and other FOSS repositories. But now we're back to OP's opinion/objections. He doesn't seem to be very active. – Ira Baxter Apr 23 '15 at 15:32

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