Locating faulty code using failure-inducing chops

Software debugging is the process of locating and correcting faulty code. Prior techniques to locate faulty code either use program analysis techniques such as backward dynamic program slicing or exclusively use delta debugging to analyze the state changes during program execution. In this paper, we present a new approach that integrates the potential of delta debugging algorithm with the benefit of forward and backward dynamic program slicing to narrow down the search for faulty code. Our approach is to use delta debugging algorithm to identify a minimal failure-inducing input, use this input to compute a forward dynamic slice and then intersect the statements in this forward dynamic slice with the statements in the backward dynamic slice of the erroneous output to compute a failure-inducing chop. We implemented our technique and conducted experiments with faulty versions of several programs from the Siemens suite to evaluate our technique. Our experiments show that failure-inducing...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: KBSE
• Authors: Neelam Gupta, Haifeng He, Xiangyu Zhang, Rajiv Gupta
• Keywords: Backward Dynamic Program, Dynamic Slices, Faulty Code, KBSE 2005, Software Engineering