3,815 research outputs found
Test Case Purification for Improving Fault Localization
Finding and fixing bugs are time-consuming activities in software
development. Spectrum-based fault localization aims to identify the faulty
position in source code based on the execution trace of test cases. Failing
test cases and their assertions form test oracles for the failing behavior of
the system under analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of
spectrum driven test case purification for improving fault localization. The
goal of test case purification is to separate existing test cases into small
fractions (called purified test cases) and to enhance the test oracles to
further localize faults. Combining with an original fault localization
technique (e.g., Tarantula), test case purification results in better ranking
the program statements. Our experiments on 1800 faults in six open-source Java
programs show that test case purification can effectively improve existing
fault localization techniques
Locating Faults with Program Slicing: An Empirical Analysis
Statistical fault localization is an easily deployed technique for quickly
determining candidates for faulty code locations. If a human programmer has to
search the fault beyond the top candidate locations, though, more traditional
techniques of following dependencies along dynamic slices may be better suited.
In a large study of 457 bugs (369 single faults and 88 multiple faults) in 46
open source C programs, we compare the effectiveness of statistical fault
localization against dynamic slicing. For single faults, we find that dynamic
slicing was eight percentage points more effective than the best performing
statistical debugging formula; for 66% of the bugs, dynamic slicing finds the
fault earlier than the best performing statistical debugging formula. In our
evaluation, dynamic slicing is more effective for programs with single fault,
but statistical debugging performs better on multiple faults. Best results,
however, are obtained by a hybrid approach: If programmers first examine at
most the top five most suspicious locations from statistical debugging, and
then switch to dynamic slices, on average, they will need to examine 15% (30
lines) of the code. These findings hold for 18 most effective statistical
debugging formulas and our results are independent of the number of faults
(i.e. single or multiple faults) and error type (i.e. artificial or real
errors)
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