arXiv:2505. 13353v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed for understanding large codebases, but whether they understand operational semantics of long code context or rely on pattern matching shortcuts remains unclear.
By Adam \v{S}torek, Mukur Gupta, Samira Hajizadeh, Prashast Srivastava, Suman Jana
arXiv:2506. 02791v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In recent years, code intelligence has gained increasing importance in the field of automated software engineering.
By Zhen Yang, Hongyi Lin, Yifan He, Junqi Wang, Zeyu Sun, Shuo Liu, Jie Xu, Pengpeng Wang, Zhongxing Yu, Qingyuan Liang
arXiv:2508. 16131v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Code completion entails the task of providing missing tokens given a surrounding context.
By Zoe Kotti, Konstantina Dritsa, Diomidis Spinellis, Panos Louridas
The paper investigates how small lexical changes in prompts can cause large performance swings in large language models. Using a dataset of 132,000 prompt variants, the authors uncover a scaling law linking higher average task performance to lower variance and greater robustness. They identify domain-specific terminology and explicit action directives as key linguistic factors that stabilize prompts, and propose an automated Prompt-Refining Agent that reduces performance variance by 40.7% in code generation while maintaining or improving mean performance.
By Qipeng Xie, Zi Liang, Jiafei Wu, Yufei Chen, Weizheng Wang, Wenao Ma, Zhong Ming, Haiqin Yang, Kaishun Wu
The paper introduces PolyHuman, a dataset of human-written programs in C++, Java, and Python, to test whether large language models can judge functional equivalence across languages. Using this dataset, the authors evaluate several open-weight and proprietary LLMs, finding that models struggle more with harder problems, show language-specific biases, and rely partly on superficial similarity cues. They also observe run‑to‑run instability in GPT‑o4‑mini, concluding that current LLMs do not reliably capture functional equivalence within or across programming languages.
By Hui Sun, Anderson Uch\^oa, Rohit Gheyi, Wesley K. G. Assun\c{c}\~ao
The paper introduces Program Executability Prediction (PrEx), a task that asks large language models (LLMs) to determine whether a program is semantically valid or invalid and, if invalid, to identify the violated formal rule. To evaluate this, the authors create a dataset of systematically generated invalid programs derived from valid ones and test open‑source coding LLMs across different semantic formalisms, semantic shifts, and program splits (human‑written, LLM‑translated, fuzzer‑generated). Results show that LLMs rely more on pre‑training priors than on the provided semantics, performing poorly on modified semantics and with increasing program complexity.
By Lara Marinov, Aditya Thimmaiah, Jayanth Srinivasa, Junyi Jessy Li, Milos Gligoric
The paper investigates whether code large language models (CodeLLMs) inadvertently reproduce proprietary or sensitive code by evaluating seven state‑of‑the‑art training data detection (TDD) methods on eight CodeLLMs. It introduces CodeSnitch, a benchmark of 9,000 function‑level code samples across three languages, each labeled as included or excluded from training data, and applies mutation strategies based on the Type‑1 to Type‑4 code clone taxonomy to test TDD robustness. The study offers a systematic assessment of current TDD techniques for code and suggests directions for developing more effective detection methods.
By Tianlin Li, Yunxiang Wei, Zhiming Li, Aishan Liu, Qing Guo, Xianglong Liu, Dongning Sun, Yang Liu
arXiv:2607. 14816v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) perform differently on identical programming tasks when prompted in different natural languages, a phenomenon known as language bias.
By Saima Afrin, Alessandro Midolo, Camilo Escobar-Vel\'asquez, Mario Linares-V\'asquez, Weiyuan Ding, Bowen Xu, Massimiliano Di Penta, Antonio Mastropaolo
Large Language Models (LLMs) perform differently on identical programming tasks when prompted in different natural languages, a phenomenon known as language bias. While this behavior has been widely studied for general text generation, its impact on code generation quality and programming conventions remains largely unexplored.
HoarePrompt is a new method that applies program verification concepts to natural language requirements, using large language models to generate step‑by‑step natural language descriptions of program states. It incorporates a few‑shot k‑induction technique to handle loops and then evaluates whether the annotated program satisfies the requirements. On the CoCoClaNeL dataset, HoarePrompt raises the Matthews correlation coefficient by 61% over zero‑shot chain‑of‑thought prompts and by 106% over test‑generation classifiers, with the inductive reasoning component adding a 26% MCC improvement.
By Dimitrios Stamatios Bouras, Yihan Dai, Tairan Wang, Yingfei Xiong, Sergey Mechtaev
arXiv:2604. 09497v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Accurate evaluation is central to the large language model (LLM) ecosystem, guiding model selection and downstream adoption across diverse use cases.
By Hippolyte Gisserot-Boukhlef, Nicolas Boizard, Emmanuel Malherbe, C\'eline Hudelot, Pierre Colombo
As large language models (LLMs) grow more capable, they are increasingly deployed in context-rich settings where task inputs are often accompanied by long, partially irrelevant context. In a controlled setting, we find that state-of-the-art models often appear robust to task-irrelevant context at the aggregate level: prepending it to benchmark questions causes little change in overall accuracy.