Employing second‐order mutation for isolating first‐order equivalent mutants
Marinos Kintis, Mike Papadakis, Nicos Malevris · Software Testing Verification and Reliability · 2014
Summary The equivalent mutant problem is a major hindrance to mutation testing. Being undecidable in general, it is only susceptible to partial solutions. In this paper, mutant classification is utilised for isolating likely to be first‐order equivalent mutants. A new classification technique,Isolating Equivalent Mutants (I‐EQM), is introduced and empirically investigated. The proposed approach employs a dynamic execution scheme that integrates theimpacton the program execution of first‐order mutants with the impact on the output of second‐order mutants. An experimental study, conducted using two independently created sets of manually classified mutants selected from real‐world programs revalidates previously published results and provides evidence for the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Overall, the study shows that I‐EQM substantially improves previous methods by retrieving a considerably higher number of killable mutants, thus, amplifying the quality of the testing process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.