Type-IV Code Clone Detection via Layer-Wise Non-Contrastive Representation Learning
Luciano Marchezan, Kevin Delcourt, Eugene Syriani, Houari Sahraoui
Abstract
Software clones are fragments of code that are similar or functionally equivalent to each other. They pose significant challenges for maintenance, refactoring, and bug detection. Detecting Type-IV clones, which are semantically equivalent but may differ syntactically, is particularly difficult for traditional token- or syntax-based methods. Recent machine learning approaches rely on contrastive learning, which requires careful negative sampling and can introduce bias. In this paper, we propose LWVIC4Code, a non-contrastive representation learning approach specifically designed for Type-IV clone detection. Building on the Variance-Invariance-Covariance Regularization (VICReg) framework and prior layer-wise VICReg training, LWVIC4Code introduces cross-layer consistency regularization and depth-dependent layer weighting to progressively refine semantic information across transformer layers, producing robust and discriminative code representations. We conduct an empirical study comparing LWVIC4Code against a contrastive learning baseline and zero-shot large language models on Python (Kamino) and multi-language (GPTCloneBench) datasets. Results show that LWVIC4Code achieves competitive or superior performance without negative samples, benefits from layer-wise supervision, and generalizes effectively from Python to other languages, particularly Java and C#. These results demonstrate that non-contrastive, layer-wise representation learning is a promising direction for robust semantic code clone detection.