Combining symbolic execution and search-based testing for programs with complex heap inputs
File(s)issta17-cr.pdf (787.11 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Braione, P
Denaro, G
Mattavelli, A
Pezzè, M
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Despite the recent improvements in automatic test case generation, handling complex data structures as test inputs is still an open problem. Search-based approaches can generate sequences of method calls that instantiate structured inputs to exercise a relevant portion of the code, but fall short in building inputs to execute program elements whose reachability is determined by the structural features of the input structures themselves. Symbolic execution techniques can effectively handle structured inputs, but do not identify the sequences of method calls that instantiate the input structures through legal interfaces. In this paper, we propose a new approach to automatically generate test cases for programs with complex data structures as inputs. We use symbolic execution to generate path conditions that characterise the dependencies between the program paths and the input structures, and convert the path conditions to optimisation problems that we solve with search-based techniques to produce sequences of method calls that instantiate those inputs. Our preliminary results show that the approach is indeed effective in generating test cases for programs with complex data structures as inputs, thus opening a promising research direction.
Date Issued
2017-07-10
Date Acceptance
2017-06-02
Citation
Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 2017, pp.90-101
ISBN
978-1-4503-5076-1
Publisher
ACM
Start Page
90
End Page
101
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis
Copyright Statement
© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.
Source
International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2017-07-10
Finish Date
2017-07-14
Coverage Spatial
Santa Barbara, CA, USA