research-article

Analysis and Testing of Programs with Exception Handling Constructs

Authors:

Mary Jean HarroldAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Volume 26, Issue 9

Pages 849 - 871

https://doi.org/10.1109/32.877846

Published: 01 September 2000 Publication History

Abstract

Analysis techniques, such as control flow, data flow, and control dependence, are used for a variety of software engineering tasks, including structural and regression testing, dynamic execution profiling, static and dynamic slicing, and program understanding. To be applicable to programs in languages such as Java and C++, these analysis techniques must account for the effects of exception occurrences and exception handling constructs; failure to do so can cause the analysis techniques to compute incorrect results and, thus, limit the usefulness of the applications that use them. This paper discusses the effects of exception handling constructs on several analysis techniques. The paper presents techniques to construct representations for programs with explicit exception occurrences exceptions that are raised explicitly through throw statements and exception handling constructs. The paper presents algorithms that use these representations to perform the desired analyses. The paper also discusses several software engineering applications that use these analyses. Finally, the paper describes empirical results pertaining to the occurrence of exception handling constructs in Java programs and their effect on some analysis tasks.

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Cited By

da Silva AVieira RMesquita DGomes JRocha L(2024)Towards automatic labeling of exception handling bugs: A case study of 10 years bug-fixing in Apache HadoopEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10494-029:4Online publication date: 5-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-024-10494-0
Liu WChen T(2023)SLocator: Localizing the Origin of SQL Queries in Database-Backed Web ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.325370049:6(3376-3390)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2023.3253700
Hora A(2023)Excluding code from test coverage: practices, motivations, and impactEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10259-728:1Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10259-7
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Index Terms

Analysis and Testing of Programs with Exception Handling Constructs
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program constructs

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Published In

cover image IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Volume 26, Issue 9

September 2000

102 pages

ISSN:0098-5589

Editors:
Anneliese von Mayrhauser Andrews
Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins
,
David L. Parnas
McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

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Copyright © Copyright © 2000 IEEE. All Rights Reserved.

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IEEE Press

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Published: 01 September 2000

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Cited By

da Silva AVieira RMesquita DGomes JRocha L(2024)Towards automatic labeling of exception handling bugs: A case study of 10 years bug-fixing in Apache HadoopEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-024-10494-029:4Online publication date: 5-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-024-10494-0
Liu WChen T(2023)SLocator: Localizing the Origin of SQL Queries in Database-Backed Web ApplicationsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2023.325370049:6(3376-3390)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.2023.3253700
Hora A(2023)Excluding code from test coverage: practices, motivations, and impactEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-022-10259-728:1Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-022-10259-7
Chen BGuo XChen YYu XBu L(2023)Constructing exception handling chains for testing Java virtual machine implementationsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.256236:4Online publication date: 15-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2562
Zhong H(2022)Which Exception Shall We Throw?Proceedings of the 37th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3551349.3556895(1-12)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3551349.3556895
Dola SDwyer MSoffa M(2021)Distribution-Aware Testing of Neural Networks Using Generative ModelsProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00032(226-237)Online publication date: 22-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00032
Lima LRocha LBezerra CPaixao M(2021)Assessing exception handling testing practices in open-source librariesEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-021-09983-326:5Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10664-021-09983-3
Dalton FRibeiro MPinto GFernandes LGheyi RFonseca BLi JJaccheri LDingsøyr TChitchyan R(2020)Is Exceptional Behavior Testing an Exception?Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3383219.3383237(170-179)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3383219.3383237
Najumudheen EMall RSamanta DNaik RSarkar SHildebrandt TKumar ASharma R(2019)Modeling and Coverage Analysis of Programs with Exception HandlingProceedings of the 12th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference (formerly known as India Software Engineering Conference)10.1145/3299771.3299785(1-11)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3299771.3299785
Zhai HCasalnuovo CDevanbu PStorey MAdams BHaiduc S(2019)Test coverage in python programsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2019.00027(116-120)Online publication date: 26-May-2019
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