How Should Diffusion Language Models Edit Code?
Code editing requires a model to decide where to make changes, generate the new content, and preserve everything else. We study how masked diffusion language models divide these responsibilities across four editing interfaces: whole-file rewriting, search-and-replace, locate-then-infill, and token-level editing. Experiments on CanItEdit reveal a composition gap: diffusion models can generate coordinated changes when the correct edit locations are supplied, but much of this capability is lost when those locations must be predicted. Access to the intact original code helps the model fill multiple edit regions, yet does not resolve the difficulty of selecting those regions. By varying the ed...
| Authors | Xijia Tao, Ziru Liu, Shansan Gong et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SE |
| Published | 29 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 29 September 2026 |
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