An Effective Path Selection Strategy for Mutation Testing

Mutation testing has been identified as one of the most effective techniques, in detecting faults. However, because of the large number of test elements that it introduces, it is regarded as rather expensive for practical use. Therefore, there is a need for testing strategies that will alleviate this drawback by selecting effective test data that will make the technique more practical. Such a strategy based on path selection is reported in this paper. A significant influence on the efficiency associated with path selection strategies is the number of test paths that must be generated in order to achieve a specified level of coverage, and it is determined by the number of paths that are found to be feasible. Specifically, a path selection strategy is proposed that aims at reducing the effects of infeasible paths and conversely developing effective and efficient mutation based tests. The results obtained from applying the method to a set of program units are reported and analysed presenting the flexibility, feasibility and practicality of the proposed approach.