refactoring

Definition

Changing a program's internal structure while preserving its external behavior — extracting a function, removing duplication, splitting a responsibility — deliberately kept separate from adding features or fixing bugs. Tests are what make it safe, since behavior preservation is the entire contract. That property also makes refactoring an appealing benchmark task for code models: unlike open-ended generation, correctness has a mechanical check, namely that the existing test suite still passes.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Walkthrough: SWE-Bench ProMax — Measuring What Coding Agents Can Really Do with Large-Scale, Multilingual RefactoringSWE-Bench ProMax: Benchmarking Agents on Large-Scale Multilingual Code Refactoring