Duplicate code smell

Duplicated code is the smelliest of the code smells. The book Refactoring Martin Fowler 1999 states that: "If you see the same code structure in more than one place, you can be sure that your program will be better if you find a way to unify them." Martin Fowler 1999 states that the simplest duplicated code problem is when you have the same expression in two methods of the same class.

See also

• Don't repeat yourself
• Once and only once
• Code smells
• Refactoring