Abstract
Mutation testing is a fault-based testing approach based on the competent programmer, and coupling effect hypotheses. One of the main difficulties faced in practice is due to the large number of mutants that can be generated for a given implementation. Earlier research to solve this problem has suggested variants of mutation testing, and finding an effective set of mutation operators. This paper presents an alternative approach for reducing the cost of testing by the identification of hierarchies among first-order mutants. The theory described here is also applicable to the quantitative assessment of testing effort and can be used to guide successive testing steps in fault-based testing.
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Kapoor, K., Bowen, J.P. (2005). Ordering Mutants to Minimise Test Effort in Mutation Testing. In: Grabowski, J., Nielsen, B. (eds) Formal Approaches to Software Testing. FATES 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3395. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31848-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-31848-4_14
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