Fault Classification Oriented Spectrum Based Fault Localization

Abstract

The commonly-used software fault localization approaches mainly utilize test coverage information and test cases execution results to calculate the suspiciousness of each program entity to identify the location of faults, namely spectrum based software fault localization (SBFL). It had been argued that such techniques are not helpful in real debugging process, since the low accuracy of localization and few information provided to programmers. In this paper we consider the combination of statement based fault classification with the SBFL, aiming at increasing accuracy of fault localization and provide additional possible fault information to programmers. An improved technique, fault classification oriented SBFL (FC-SBFL), is proposed in this paper, in which the suspiciousness value is adjusted dynamically based on the probability of statement being faulty. Experimental results on real application programs show that FC-SBFL is more effective than SBFL to locate faults, and studies with Tarantula and OP2 show that more than 75% faults have been identified in a better effectiveness.