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Automated path generation for software fault localization

Published: 07 November 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Localizing the cause(s) of an observable error lies at the heart of program debugging. Fault localization often proceeds by comparing the failing program run with some "successful" run (a run which does not demonstrate the error). An issue here is to generate or choose a "suitable" successful run; this task is often left to the programmer. In this paper, we present an efficient technique where the construction of the successful run as well its comparison with the failing run is automated. Our method constructs a successful program run by toggling the outcomes of some conditional branch instances in the failing run. If such a successful run exists, program statements for these branches are returned as bug report. In our experiments with the Siemens benchmark suite, we found that the quality of our bug report compares well with those produced by existing fault localization approaches where the programmer manually provides or chooses a successful run.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ASE '05: Proceedings of the 20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
November 2005
482 pages
ISBN:1581139934
DOI:10.1145/1101908
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 07 November 2005

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  1. automated debugging
  2. program comprehension

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Overall Acceptance Rate 82 of 337 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)The MADAG Strategy for Fault Location TechniquesApplied Sciences10.3390/app1302081913:2(819)Online publication date: 6-Jan-2023
  • (2023)Configuration Error Localization Based on Delta Debugging2023 International Conference on Blockchain Technology and Information Security (ICBCTIS)10.1109/ICBCTIS59921.2023.00011(27-32)Online publication date: Jun-2023
  • (2023)Software Fault Localization: an Overview of Research, Techniques, and ToolsHandbook of Software Fault Localization10.1002/9781119880929.ch1(1-117)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2023
  • (2022)MC-FLoc: Learning from Traces to Locate Fault in Petri Net Model Checking2022 IEEE 33rd International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)10.1109/ISSRE55969.2022.00040(332-343)Online publication date: Oct-2022
  • (2022)Model-Based Fault Classification for Automotive SoftwareProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-3-031-21037-2_6(110-131)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2022
  • (2021)Localizing Vulnerabilities Statistically From One ExploitProceedings of the 2021 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3433210.3437528(537-549)Online publication date: 24-May-2021
  • (2020)Every Mutation Should Be Rewarded: Boosting Fault Localization with Mutated Predicates2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00028(196-207)Online publication date: Sep-2020
  • (2019)Hunting for bugs in code coverage tools via randomized differential testingProceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2019.00061(488-499)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
  • (2019)Graph-Based Fault LocalizationComputational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 201910.1007/978-3-030-24305-0_28(372-387)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2019
  • (2018)How test suites impact fault localisation starting from the sizeIET Software10.1049/iet-sen.2017.002612:3(190-205)Online publication date: Jun-2018
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