Binkley, D., Glenn, J., Alsharif, A. et al. (1 more author) (2020) An investigation into the effect of control and data dependence paths on predicate testability. In: Proceedings of 2020 IEEE 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM). 2020 IEEE 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM), 28 Sep - 02 Oct 2020, Adelaide, Australia. IEEE , pp. 160-170. ISBN 9781728192499
Abstract
The squeeziness of a sequence of program statements captures the loss of information (loss of entropy) caused by its execution. This information loss leads to problems such as failed error propagation. Intuitively, longer more complex statement sequences (more formally, longer paths of dependencies) bring greater squeeze. Using the cost of search-based test data generation as a measure of lost information, we investigate this intuition. Unexpectedly, we find virtually no correlation between dependence path length and information loss. Thus our study represents an (unexpected) negative result.Moreover, looking through the literature, this finding is in agreement with recent work of Masri and Podgurski. As such, our work replicates a negative result. More precisely, it provides a conceptual, generalization and extension replication. The replication falls into the category of a conceptual replication in that different methods are used to address a common problem, and into the category of generalization and extension in that we sample a different population of subjects and more rigorously consider the resulting data. Specifically, while Masri and Podgurski only informally observed the lack of a connection, we rigorously assess it using a range of statistical models.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | source code analysis; entropy; test generation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Oct 2020 10:31 |
Last Modified: | 11 Nov 2021 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | IEEE |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1109/SCAM51674.2020.00023 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166650 |