D. Yates
Abstract
Branch testing, which is one of the most widely used methods for program testing, see White [1] for example, involves executing a selected set of program paths in an attempt to exercise all program branches. Criteria for selecting such paths have, to date, received scant attention in the literature and it is the issue of developing a suitable path selection strategy to which this paper is addressed. Specifically, a selection strategy, which aims at reducing the number of infeasible paths generated during the branch testing exercise is proposed. The strategy is founded on an assertion concerning the likely feasibility of program paths. Statistical evidence in support of the assertion is provided, a method implementing the strategy is described, and the results obtained from applying the method to a set of program units are reported and analysed.
- 1 White, L. J. "Software Testing and Verification", Advances in Computers, M. C. Yovits cd., 26, 1987.Google Scholar
- 2 Howden W. E. "Empirical Studies of Software Validation", Tutorial: Software Testing and Validation Techniques, E. Miller and W. E. Howden eds., IEEE, 1978.Google Scholar
- 3 Yates, D. F. and Hennell M. A. "An Approach to Branch Testing" Proc 11th International Workshop on Graph Theoretic Techniques in Computer Science, Wurtzburg, 1985.Google Scholar
- 4 Chatfield, C. " Statistics for Technology ", Chapman and Hall, New York, 1970.Google Scholar
- 5 Weyuker, E. J. "The Applicability of Program Schema Results to Programs", Int. J. Comput. Inf. Sci., 8, 1979.Google Scholar
- 6 Brown, J. R. "Practical Application of Automated Software Tools", TRW Report TRW-SS-72-05, TRW Systems, One Space Park, Redondo Beach, California, 1972.Google Scholar
- 7 Malevris N. Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, U.K., 1988.Google Scholar
- 8 Dreyfus S. E. "An Appraisal of Some Shortest-Path Algorithms", Operations Research, 17, 1969.Google Scholar
- 9 Shier D. R. "Iterative Methods for Determining the K Shortest Paths in a Network", Networks, 6, 1976.Google Scholar
- 10 Minieka E. "On Computing Sets of Shortest Paths in a Graph', Comm. ACM, 17, 1974. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Reducing the effects of infeasible paths in branch testing
Recommendations
The causes and effects of infeasible paths in computer programs
ICSE '85: Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Software engineeringAn analysis is presented of infeasible paths found in the NAG library of numerical algorithms. The construction of program paths designed to maximise structural testing measures is shown to be impossible without taking infeasibilities into account. ...
Reducing the effects of infeasible paths in branch testing
TAV3: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT '89 third symposium on Software testing, analysis, and verificationBranch testing, which is one of the most widely used methods for program testing, see White [1] for example, involves executing a selected set of program paths in an attempt to exercise all program branches. Criteria for selecting such paths have, to ...
Infeasible paths in object-oriented programs
A dataflow analysis computes an approximation of the values computed at various points in a program by considering how the execution of statements transforms the program's state. Dataflow analyses are often expressed as a reachability problem in a ...
Comments