Structural testing of programs

Abstract

Program testing may be performed using either one of two approaches; structural or functional. This paper is concerned with the structural testing approach of programs. Given a listing of the program, the first step is to construct its flowgraph. The flowgraph usually contains a very large number of paths, owing to the program loops, so testing all the paths is impossible. A subset of these paths are chosen, according to one criterion or another. Then, a set of test data is generated which causes the selected paths to be traversed when the program runs. Finally, the program runs, using the generated test data, and the output is analysed to detect program errors. The paper discusses the problems involved and the methods used in each step of the above mentioned structural testing methodology.