An Experimental Determination of Su cient Mutant Operators
An Experimental Determination of Su cient Mutant Operators
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发表时间：
1996
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通讯作者：
G. Rothermel;R. Untch
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作者：
G. Rothermel;R. Untch
变异测试是一种用于软件单元测试的技术，它虽然强大，但计算成本高昂。变异的主要成本在于测试程序的许多变体（称为变异体）必须被反复执行。本文根据所创建的变异体数量来量化变异的成本，然后提出并评估了一种将变异体数量减少一个数量级的技术。选择性变异通过减少变异体数量来降低变异测试的成本。本文报告了将选择性变异测试与标准（或非选择性）变异测试进行比较的实验结果，以及量化选择性变异测试所实现的节省的结果。这些结果支持这样的假设：选择性变异几乎与非选择性变异一样强大；在实验测试中，选择性变异提供的覆盖率几乎与非选择性变异相同，但变异体数量减少了四倍或更多。
Mutation testing is a technique for unit testing software that, although powerful, is computationally expensive. The principal expense of mutation is that many variants of the test program, called mutants, must be repeatedly executed. This paper quanti es the expense of mutation in terms of the number of mutants that are created, then proposes and evaluates a technique that reduces the number of mutants by an order of magnitude. Selective mutation reduces the cost of mutation testing by reducing the number of mutants. This paper reports experimental results that compare selective mutation testing with standard, or non-selective, mutation testing, and results that quantify the savings achieved by selective mutation testing. The results support the hypothesis that selective mutation is almost as strong as non-selective mutation; in experimental trials selective mutation provides almost the same coverage as non-selective mutation, with a four-fold or more reduction in the number of mutants.