Implementing prototype testing tools
Dick Hamlet · Software Practice and Experience · 1995
Abstract Testing tools are software analyzers that use information from particular executions of a program as well as information about a specification and the program text itself. Research prototypes of such tools are essential to investigate the ideas they embody. Often, hand calculation is so tedious and error‐prone that an investigator cannot obtain any intuition about his or her ideas without an implementation to aid in experiments. Traditionally, such tools have been implemented in conventional high‐level languages (e.g., C, Pascal), a process that takes more time than a prototype should. The technology of compiler generators and logic programming, applied to the idea of self‐instrumenting programs, drastically shortens the prototype cycle. This paper describes a general method for implementing prototype tools, gives examples of several old and new testing techniques fitted into the method, and discusses the ease with which such prototypes may be changed.