Simplifying and isolating failure-inducing input

Given some test case, a program fails. Which circumstances of the test case are responsible for the particular failure? The delta debugging algorithm generalizes and simplifies the failing test case to a minimal test case that still produces the failure. It also isolates the difference between a pas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 183 - 200
Main Authors: Zeller, A., Hildebrandt, R.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2002
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects:
Aircraft accidents & safety
Algorithms
Automatic testing
Automation
Case studies
Computer bugs
Computer crashes
Computer Society
Computers
Debugging
Deltas
Diagnostics
Engineers
Engines
Failure
HTML
HyperText Markup Language
Polycarbonates
Prototypes
Software
Software engineering
Studies
Systems design
Turning
Vehicle crash testing
Web browser
Web browsers
ISSN:0098-5589, 1939-3520
Online Access:Get full text
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Description
Summary:Given some test case, a program fails. Which circumstances of the test case are responsible for the particular failure? The delta debugging algorithm generalizes and simplifies the failing test case to a minimal test case that still produces the failure. It also isolates the difference between a passing and a failing test case. In a case study, the Mozilla Web browser crashed after 95 user actions. Our prototype implementation automatically simplified the input to three relevant user actions. Likewise, it simplified 896 lines of HTML to the single line that caused the failure. The case study required 139 automated test runs or 35 minutes on a 500 MHz PC.
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ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/32.988498