Impact of mutation operators on mutant equivalence

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Abstract

The presence of equivalent mutants is a recurrent source of aggravation in mutation-based studies of software testing, as it distorts our analysis and precludes assertive claims. But the determination of whether a mutant is equivalent to a base program is undecidable, and practical approaches are tedious, error-prone, and tend to produce insufficient or unnecessary conditions of equivalence. We argue that an attractive alternative to painstakingly identifying equivalent mutants is to estimate their number. This is an attractive alternative for two reasons: First, in most practical applications, it is not necessary to identify equivalent mutants individually; rather it suffices to know their number. Second, even when we need to identify equivalent mutants, knowing their number enables us to single them out with little to moderate effort.

Identifier

85071474237 (Scopus)

ISBN

[9789897583209]

Publication Title

Icsoft 2018 Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Software Technologies

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.5220/0006833000210032

First Page

21

Last Page

32

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