Moss (Measure of Software Similarity) is a service that is used to check for plagiarism with programming assignments.
Moss is simply a command-line script that sends the program files to a server. You give the moss script criteria (such as the programming language), ship off the files, and are returned with a link where you can view the results.
To get started with Moss, you need to register for it. Directions on how to register are on the Moss website, in the "Register for Moss" section. If you don't really understand the directions on the website, here's the gist of it: Email [email protected] a message with the body:
registeruser mail username@domain
Where username@domain is your email address.
In a little while, you'll be given an email that has a moss script with a unique user id just for you. It's a Perl script, so be sure your system can run Perl programs!
There are detailed usage instructions in the moss script, but I'll cover two basic script options that should help you get started.
First off, the -l option tells the script what language to process the programs
under. So the option -l java will process the files you send as java files.
Next, the -c option allows you to give a comments string that will appear on the
report that Moss creates. This allows you to label the generated report for context.
Here's a simple one:
moss -l java -c "CS 46A Spring 2014 - Homework 1 Final" *.java
This will grade all of the java files in the current directory (*.java),
specifying to Moss that the files are java files (-l java), and giving the
report a label of CS 46A Spring 2014 - Homework 1 Final.
When you run this script, the files you specify will be sent to the Moss server, Once it's done generating the report, it will give you a link to the report on the command-line output.
The Moss report isn't saved on the server forever. It probably only lasts for a
couple of weeks. If you want to see the report in the future, you would either have
te send Moss the same files once more, or you can download them onto your machine.
If you want to do the latter, you can do so with wget, for example:
wget -r -np http://moss.stanford.edu/results/619603464
I want to check for plagiarism a bunch of homeworks written in 8086 assembly language using MOSS script, but all the time I receive the message "File 1 File 2 Lines Matched / No matches were found in your submission.", even if I send the same file. The options are: "./moss -l a8086 -m 3 file1.asm file1.asm". There is expected another form for MOSS command or for assembly sources?