A novel use of equivalent mutants for static anomaly detection in software artifacts

Arcaini, Paolo; Gargantini, Angelo; Riccobene, Elvinia; Vavassori, P.

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2016.01.019

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…However, many researchers have started viewing this as an advantage in certain cases. Arcaini et al [331,332] seek to find opportunities to improve the quality of the artefact under consideration. For example, they suggest that equivalent mutants can be used for improving code readability and for refactoring purposes.…”

Section: Other Mutation-based Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutation Testing Advances: An Analysis and Survey

Papadakis

Kintis

Zhang

et al. 2019

Advances in Computers

357

343

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Mutation testing realises the idea of using artificial defects to support testing activities. Mutation is typically used as a way to evaluate the adequacy of test suites, to guide the generation of test cases and to support experimentation.Mutation has reached a maturity phase and gradually gains popularity both in academia and in industry. This chapter presents a survey of recent advances, over the past decade, related to the fundamental problems of mutation testing and sets out the challenges and open problems for the future development of the method. It also collects advices on best practices related to the use of mutation in empirical studies of software testing. Thus, giving the reader a 'mini-handbook'-style roadmap for the application of mutation testing as experimental methodology.

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Section: Other Mutation-based Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutation Testing Advances: An Analysis and Survey

Papadakis

Kintis

Zhang

et al. 2019

Advances in Computers

357

343

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Arcaini et al [5] showcased that mutants can be better than the original source code, including the case when the mutated source code has better time complexity than the original one. However, no discussion was performed on how equivalent mutants can be exploited.…”

Section: Equivalent Mutants For Source Code Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…• Relational Operator Replacement (ROR): replaces relational operators with others, e.g., >= with >. In certain cases, avoiding to execute the code when the condition reaches equality can enhance the performance (as shown in [5]), for example, when searching for the maximum number within an array as shown in the following code snippet (hereafter ∆ denotes the difference/replacement, i.e., the obtained mutant).…”

Section: Equivalent Mutants For Source Code Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We note that detecting equivalent mutants using compiler optimizations is well established [4]. However, to the best of our knowledge, the first publication where a novel use of equivalent mutants is discussed, appeared recently [5]; the authors show that equivalent mutants can be used for static anomaly detection, e.g., to detect if the mutated code possesses better readability, better execution time, etc. However, the authors do not study nor outline a procedure where mutation operators are used for source code optimization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Source code optimization using equivalent mutants

López

Kushik

Yevtushenko

2018

Information and Software Technology

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Context: A mutant is a program obtained by syntactically modifying a program's source code; an equivalent mutant is a mutant, which is functionally equivalent to the original program. Mutants are primarily used in mutation testing, and when deriving a test suite, obtaining an equivalent mutant is considered to be highly negative, although these equivalent mutants could be used for other purposes. Objective: We present an approach that considers equivalent mutants valuable, and utilizes them for source code optimization. Source code optimization enhances a program's source code preserving its behavior. Method: We showcase a procedure to achieve source code optimization based on equivalent mutants and discuss proper mutation operators. Results: Experimental evaluation with Java and C programs demonstrates the applicability of the proposed approach. Conclusion: An algorithmic approach for source code optimization using equivalent mutants is proposed. It is showcased that whenever applicable, the approach can outperform traditional compiler optimizations.

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“…Mutation analysis has been used previously to detect anomalies in programs statically [2]. As in our approach, the program variants are produced using mutation analysis, but the idea here is to look for variants that are semantically equivalent, but better in some specific sense than the original.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

First, Fuzz the Mutants

Groce¹,

Kalburgi²,

Goues³

et al. 2022

Proceedings FUZZING 2022 - 1st International Fuzzing Workshop

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Most fuzzing efforts, very understandably, focus on fuzzing the program in which bugs are to be found. However, in this paper we propose that fuzzing programs "near" the System Under Test (SUT) can in fact improve the effectivness of fuzzing, even if it means less time is spent fuzzing the actual target system. In particular, we claim that fault detection and code coverage can be improved by splitting fuzzing resources between the SUT and mutants of the SUT. Spending half of a fuzzing budget fuzzing mutants, and then using the seeds generated to fuzz the SUT can allow a fuzzer to explore more behaviors than spending the entire fuzzing budget on the SUT. The approach works because fuzzing most mutants is "almost" fuzzing the SUT, but may change behavior in ways that allow a fuzzer to reach deeper program behaviors. Our preliminary results show that fuzzing mutants is trivial to implement, and provides clear, statistically significant, benefits in terms of fault detection for a non-trivial benchmark program; these benefits are robust to a variety of detailed choices as to how to make use of mutants in fuzzing. The proposed approach has two additional important advantages: first, it is fuzzer-agnostic, applicable to any corpus-based fuzzer without requiring modification of the fuzzer; second, the fuzzing of mutants, in addition to aiding fuzzing the SUT, also gives developers insight into the mutation score of a fuzzing harness, which may help guide improvements to a project's fuzzing approach.Assume that conditions hard1 and hard2 are independent constraints on an input, both of which are difficult International Fuzzing Workshop (FUZZING) 2022

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A novel use of equivalent mutants for static anomaly detection in software artifacts

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

Mutation Testing Advances: An Analysis and Survey

Mutation Testing Advances: An Analysis and Survey

Source code optimization using equivalent mutants

First, Fuzz the Mutants

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