Test Generation for Programs with Binary Tree Structure as Input

Abstract

Test data generation is a process of creating program inputs that satisfy specific testing criteria. Many works have been focused on test generation with respect to numeric and string data. Dynamic data structures, such as trees and linked lists, have been widely used in modern programming, but on which there are few studies presented. In general, generating a dynamic data structure is associated with a proper shape and valid values generation. It would be difficult to generate such dynamic data structures, as both shapes and values are necessary to be valid simultaneously. This paper focuses on binary tree structures and proposes a novel test generation approach that combines search based testing with constraint solving techniques. The approach creates the shapes of binary tree structures by using GA, and generates the values in their data fields by using constraint solving techniques. The experimental results show that the presented approach is promising and effective. Moreover, the studies investigate factors affecting the performance of the approach, and arrive at a conclusion that the test generation cost is cubic growing as the number of pointer constraints increases.