Quantitative analysis of mutant equivalence

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Abstract

Program mutation is the process of generating syntactic variations of a base program and analyzing them by comparison with the base; this process is meaningful only to the extent that the mutants are semantically distinct from the base program, but that is not always the case. Two programs may be syntactically distinct yet semantically equivalent. The problem of identifying and weeding out equivalent mutants has eluded researchers for a long time. In this chapter we argue that researchers ought to abandon the overly ambitious goal of determining whether a program and its mutant are equivalent, and focus instead on the more modest, but sufficient, goal of estimating the number of equivalent mutants that a program is prone to generate.

Identifier

85089240054 (Scopus)

ISBN

[9783030529901]

Publication Title

Communications in Computer and Information Science

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52991-8_4

e-ISSN

18650937

ISSN

18650929

First Page

58

Last Page

80

Volume

1250 CCIS

Grant

DGE1565478

Fund Ref

National Science Foundation

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