@inproceedings{8bc4aac79c4f4c448a1fe14466e494f8,
title = "Estimating the survival rate of mutants",
abstract = "Mutation testing is often used to assess the quality of a test suite by analyzing its ability to distinguish between a base program and its mutants. The main threat to the validity/reliability of this assessment approach is that many mutants may be syntactically distinct from the base, yet functionally equivalent to it. The problem of identifying equivalent mutants and excluding them from consideration is the focus of much recent research. In this paper we argue that it is not necessary to identify individual equivalent mutants and count them; rather it is sufficient to estimate their number. To do so, we consider the question: what makes a program prone to produce equivalent mutants? Our answer is: redundancy does. Consequently, we introduce a number of program metrics that capture various dimensions of redundancy in a program, and show empirically that they are statistically linked to the rate of equivalent mutants.",
keywords = "Mutant survival rate, Mutation testing, Semantic metrics",
author = "Imen Marsit and Omri, {Mohamed Nazih} and Ali Mili",
note = "Publisher Copyright: Copyright {\textcopyright} 2017 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved.; 12th International Conference on Software Technologies, ICSOFT 2017 ; Conference date: 24-07-2017 Through 26-07-2017",
year = "2017",
doi = "10.5220/0006392802080213",
language = "English (US)",
series = "ICSOFT 2017 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Technologies",
publisher = "SciTePress",
pages = "208--213",
editor = "Jorge Cardoso and Jorge Cardoso and Leszek Maciaszek and Leszek Maciaszek and {van Sinderen}, Marten and Enrique Cabello",
booktitle = "ICSOFT 2017 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Technologies",
}