eprintid: 1508140 rev_number: 28 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/01/50/81/40 datestamp: 2017-05-16 15:55:58 lastmod: 2021-10-10 22:55:21 status_changed: 2017-05-16 15:55:58 type: proceedings_section metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Yao, X creators_name: Harman, M creators_name: Jia, Y title: A Study of Equivalent and Stubborn Mutation Operators using Human Analysis of Equivalence ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C05 divisions: F48 keywords: Mutation Testing, Equivalent Mutant, Stubborn Mutant note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. abstract: Though mutation testing has been widely studied for more than thirty years, the prevalence and properties of equivalent mutants remain largely unknown. We report on the causes and prevalence of equivalent mutants and their relationship to stubborn mutants (those that remain undetected by a high quality test suite, yet are non-equivalent). Our results, based on manual analysis of 1,230 mutants from 18 programs, reveal a highly uneven distribution of equivalence and stubbornness. For example, the ABS class and half UOI class generate many equivalent and almost no stubborn mutants, while the LCR class generates many stubborn and few equivalent mutants. We conclude that previous test effectiveness studies based on fault seeding could be skewed, while developers of mutation testing tools should prioritise those operators that we found generate disproportionately many stubborn (and few equivalent) mutants. date: 2014-05-31 date_type: published publisher: Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2568225.2568265 oa_status: green full_text_type: other language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1088367 doi: 10.1145/2568225.2568265 isbn_13: 9781450327565 lyricists_name: Harman, Mark lyricists_name: Jia, Yue lyricists_id: MHARM36 lyricists_id: YJIAX90 actors_name: Jia, Yue actors_id: YJIAX90 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public series: International Conference on Software Engineering publication: 36TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (ICSE 2014) volume: 36 place_of_pub: New York, USA pagerange: 919-930 pages: 12 event_title: ICSE 2014: 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 31 May - 7 June 2014, Hyderabad, India event_location: Hyderabad, INDIA event_dates: 31 May 2014 - 07 June 2015 book_title: ICSE 2014: Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering editors_name: Jalote, P editors_name: Briand, L editors_name: Van der Hoek, A citation: Yao, X; Harman, M; Jia, Y; (2014) A Study of Equivalent and Stubborn Mutation Operators using Human Analysis of Equivalence. In: Jalote, P and Briand, L and Van der Hoek, A, (eds.) ICSE 2014: Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering. (pp. pp. 919-930). Association for Computer Machinery (ACM): New York, USA. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508140/1/icse14-xy.pdf