Detecting and Explaining Python Name Errors

IF 3.8 2区 计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Jiawei Wang , Li Li , Kui Liu , Xiaoning Du
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Python has become one of the most popular programming languages nowadays but has not received enough attention from the software engineering community. Many errors, either fixed or not yet, have been scattered in the lifetime of Python projects, including popular Python libraries that have already been reused. NameError is among one of those errors that are widespread in the Python community, as confirmed in our empirical study. Yet, our community has not put effort into helping developers mitigate its introductions. To fill this gap, we propose in this work a static analysis-based approach called DENE (short for Detecting and Explaining Name Errors) to automatically detect and explain name errors in Python projects. To this end, DENE builds control-flow graphs for Python projects and leverages a scope-aware reaching definition analysis to locate identifiers that may cause name errors at runtime and report their locations. Experimental results on carefully crafted ground truth demonstrate that DENE is effective in detecting name errors in real-world Python projects. The results also confirm that unknown name errors are still widely presented in popular Python projects and libraries, and the outputs of DENE can indeed help developers understand why the name errors are flagged as such.
检测和解释 Python 名称错误
Python 已成为当今最流行的编程语言之一,但却没有得到软件工程社区的足够重视。在 Python 项目(包括已被重用的流行 Python 库)的生命周期中,散布着许多已修复或尚未修复的错误。我们的实证研究证实,NameError 就是 Python 社区中普遍存在的错误之一。然而,我们的社区并没有努力帮助开发者减少其引入。为了填补这一空白,我们在这项工作中提出了一种基于静态分析的方法,称为 DENE(Detecting and Explaining Name Errors 的缩写),用于自动检测和解释 Python 项目中的名称错误。为此,DENE 构建了 Python 项目的控制流图,并利用范围感知达到定义分析来定位可能在运行时导致名称错误的标识符,并报告其位置。在精心制作的基本事实基础上进行的实验结果表明,DENE 能有效检测真实 Python 项目中的名称错误。实验结果还证实,未知名称错误仍然广泛存在于流行的 Python 项目和库中,而 DENE 的输出结果确实可以帮助开发人员理解名称错误被标记为未知名称错误的原因。
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来源期刊
Information and Software Technology
Information and Software Technology 工程技术-计算机:软件工程
CiteScore
9.10
自引率
7.70%
发文量
164
审稿时长
9.6 weeks
期刊介绍: Information and Software Technology is the international archival journal focusing on research and experience that contributes to the improvement of software development practices. The journal''s scope includes methods and techniques to better engineer software and manage its development. Articles submitted for review should have a clear component of software engineering or address ways to improve the engineering and management of software development. Areas covered by the journal include: • Software management, quality and metrics, • Software processes, • Software architecture, modelling, specification, design and programming • Functional and non-functional software requirements • Software testing and verification & validation • Empirical studies of all aspects of engineering and managing software development Short Communications is a new section dedicated to short papers addressing new ideas, controversial opinions, "Negative" results and much more. Read the Guide for authors for more information. The journal encourages and welcomes submissions of systematic literature studies (reviews and maps) within the scope of the journal. Information and Software Technology is the premiere outlet for systematic literature studies in software engineering.
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