An experimental evaluation of a symbolic execution system
- 1 January 1992
- journal article
- Published by Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in Software Engineering Journal
- Vol. 7 (4) , 285-290
- https://doi.org/10.1049/sej.1992.0029
Abstract
In this paper, we describe a symbolic execution system that assists in the construction of test data and the detection of program errors. The system automatically generates a subset of all possible execution paths in the program, according to a certain path selection criterion. It symbolically executes each one of these paths and creates conditions on input variables that cause the path to be executed. These conditions form a system of equalities and inequalities. Solving this system gives input variable values that cause the path to be executed. If the system of conditions for a path is insoluble, the path is infeasible. We present the results ofexperiments that have been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the system and the path selection criterion employed in it.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- SELECT---a formal system for testing and debugging programs by symbolic executionPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1975