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On the Automated Generation of Program Test Data
Abstract
Software validation through testing will continue to be a very important tool for ensuring correctness of large scale software systems. Automation of testing tools can greatly enhance their power and reduce testing cost. In this paper, techniques for automated test data generation are discussed. Given a program graph, a set of paths are identified to satisfy some given testing criteria. When a path or a program segment is specified, symbolic execution is used for generating input constraints which define a set of inputs for executing this path or segment. Problems encountered in symbolic execution are discussed. A new approach for resolving array reference ambiguities and a procedure for generating test inputs satisfying input constraints are proposed. References to arrays are recorded in a table. during symbolic execution and ambiguities are resolved when test data are generated to evaluate the subscript expressions. The implementation of a test data generator for Fortran programs incorporating these techniques is also described.
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Cited by
Hints on Test Data Selection: Help for the Practicing Programmer
DeMillo, R. A., Lipton, R. J., & Sayward, F. G. (1978) · Computer · doi:10.1109/c-m.1978.218136 · Cited by 2,081
Search‐based software test data generation: a survey
McMinn, P. (2004) · Software Testing, Verification and Reliability · doi:10.1002/stvr.294 · Cited by 1,368
Constraint-based automatic test data generation
DeMilli, R. A., & Offutt, A. J. (1991) · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · doi:10.1109/32.92910 · Cited by 804
The software model checker Blast: Applications to software engineering
Beyer, D., Henzinger, T. A., Jhala, R., & Majumdar, R. (2007) · International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer · doi:10.1007/s10009-007-0044-z · Cited by 585
Metadata
- Authors
- Ramamoorthy, C. V., Ho, S.-B. F., & Chen, W. T.
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
- Published
- 1976-12
- Volume
- SE-2
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 293-300
- ISSN
- 0098-5589 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2033072042
- Cited by
- 319
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 15.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: On the Automated Generation of Program Test Data. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1109/tse.1976.233835
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- Ramamoorthy, C. V., Ho, S.-B. F., & Chen, W. T. (1976). On the Automated Generation of Program Test Data. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1109/tse.1976.233835
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