A Fault-Localization Approach Based on the Coincidental Correctness Probability

Abstract

Coverage-based fault localization is a spectrum-based technique that identifies the executing program elements that correlate with failure. However, the effectiveness of coverage-based fault localization suffers from the effect of coincidental correctness which occurs when a fault is executed but no failure is detected. Coincidental correctness is prevalent and proved as a safety reducing factor for the coverage-based fault location techniques. In this paper, we propose a new fault-localization approach based on the coincidental correctness probability. We estimate the probability that coincidental correctness happens for each program execution using dynamic data-flow analysis and control-flow analysis. To evaluate our approach, we use safety and precision as evaluation metrics. Our experiment involved 62 seeded versions of C programs from SIR. We discuss the comparison results with Tarantula and two improved CBFL techniques cleansing test suites from coincidental correctness. The results show that our approach can improve the safety and precision of the fault-localization technique to a certain degree.