Automatically Locating software Errors using Interesting Value Mapping Pair (IVMP)
Ajai Kumar, Anil Kumar, Deepti Tak, Sonam Pal · 2012
Software does not always behave as expected due to errors. These errors can potentially lead to disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, debugging software errors can be difficult and time-consuming. Many techniques to automatically locate errors have been developed, but the results are far from ideal. Unlike other techniques that analyze existing state information from program executions, dynamic state alteration techniques modify the state of program executions to gain deeper insight into the potential locations of errors. However, prior state alteration techniques are generally no more effective than other techniques, and come at the expense of increased computation time. The Value Replacement technique performs aggressive state alterations to locate software errors by replacing the set of values used in different statement instances in failing program executions. In a set of benchmarks, interesting value mapping pair (IVMP) precisely identifies a faulty statement; interesting value mapping pair (IVMP) can be generalized to iteratively locate multiple errors. Key word: IVMP, Value Replacement, ErroneouslyOmitted Statements, Extraneous Statements