RT journal article
T1 Using Evolutionary Mutation Testing to improve the quality of test suites
A1 Delgado Pérez, Pedro
A1 Medina Bulo, María Inmaculada
A1 Núñez, Manuel
A2 Ingeniería Informática
K1 Mutation testing
K1 evolutionary computation
K1 object-oriented programming
K1 C++
AB Mutation testing is a method used to assess and improve the fault detection capability of a test suite by creating faulty versions, called mutants, of the system under test. Evolutionary Mutation Testing (EMT), like selective mutation or mutant sampling, was proposed to reduce the computational cost, which is a major concern when applying mutation testing. This technique implements an evolutionary algorithm to produce a reduced subset of mutants but with a high proportion of mutants that can help the tester derive new test cases (strong mutants). In this paper, we go a step further in estimating the ability of this technique to induce the generation of test cases. Instead of measuring the percentage of strong mutants within the subset of generated mutants, we compute how much the test suite is actually improved thanks to those mutants. In our experiments, we have compared the extent to which EMT and the random selection of mutants help to find missing test cases in C++ object-oriented systems. We can conclude from our results that the percentage of mutants generated with EMT is lower than with the random strategy to obtain a test suite of the same size and that the technique scales better for complex programs.
PB IEEE
YR 2017
FD 2017-06
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/23184
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/23184
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 13-nov-2026