Continuing with the series of tools I’ve been posting on source code auditing and application security, here is PMD a Java Source Code Scanner.

PMD scans Java source code and looks for potential problems like:

• Possible bugs – empty try/catch/finally/switch statements
• Dead code – unused local variables, parameters and private methods
• Suboptimal code – wasteful String/StringBuffer usage
• Overcomplicated expressions – unnecessary if statements, for loops that could be while loops
• Duplicate code – copied/pasted code means copied/pasted bugs

PMD is integrated with JDeveloper, Eclipse, JEdit, JBuilder, BlueJ, CodeGuide, NetBeans/Sun Java Studio Enterprise/Creator, IntelliJ IDEA, TextPad, Maven, Ant, Gel, JCreator, and Emacs.

You can read more about PMD at the homepage here.

You can download everything from here:

Download PMD