高效发现高阶突变体
Efficiently Finding Higher-Order Mutants
摘要：
高阶变异具有改善传统一阶变异的主要缺点的潜力，例如通过模拟更真实的故障或改进测试优化技术。尽管人们对研究有希望的高阶突变体感兴趣，但由于突变组合的指数搜索空间，很难找到这样的突变体。最先进的方法依赖于遗传搜索，由于其随机性，这通常是不完整和昂贵的。首先，我们提出了一种新的方法，找到一套完整的高阶突变体，通过使用变分执行，一种技术，可以在许多情况下，探索大搜索空间完全，往往有效。其次，我们使用已识别的高阶突变体的完整集合来研究它们的特征。最后，我们使用所确定的特性来设计和评估一个新的搜索策略，独立于变的执行，这是非常有效的，即使在大型代码库中找到高阶突变体。
英文摘要：
Higher-order mutation has the potential for improving major drawbacks of traditional first-order mutation, such as by simulating more realistic faults or improving test optimization techniques. Despite interest in studying promising higher-order mutants, such mutants are difficult to find due to the exponential search space of mutation combinations. State-of-the-art approaches rely on genetic search, which is often incomplete and expensive due to its stochastic nature. First, we propose a novel way of finding a complete set of higher-order mutants by using variational execution, a technique that can, in many cases, explore large search spaces completely and often efficiently. Second, we use the identified complete set of higher-order mutants to study their characteristics. Finally, we use the identified characteristics to design and evaluate a new search strategy, independent of variational execution, that is highly effective at finding higher-order mutants even in large code bases.
机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来，可能存在错误，请以论文正文为准。
