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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.DX.2025.3

Combining Dynamic Slicing and Spectrum-Based Fault Localization - A First Experimental Evaluation

Authors: Jonas Schleich and Franz Wotawa

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 136, 36th International Conference on Principles of Diagnosis and Resilient Systems (DX 2025)

Abstract

Identifying and localizing bugs in programs has always been considered a complex but essential topic. Whereas the former has led to substantial progress in areas like formal verification and testing with a high degree of automation, the latter has not been satisfactorily automated. Approaches like program slicing, model-based diagnosis, and, more recently, spectrum-based fault localization can be used to find possible causes of a misbehaving program automatically, but often come with high computational complexity or a larger list of diagnoses, which require additional manual effort. In this paper, we present the first experimental results of an approach that combines program slicing with spectrum-based fault localization aiming at improving the outcome of automated debugging methods. In contrast to previous work, where we illustrated potential improvements only by considering a particular use case, we present an evaluation based on 22 different example programs in this paper. The approach improves the wasted effort on average by around 5 to 15% on average.

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Jonas Schleich and Franz Wotawa. Combining Dynamic Slicing and Spectrum-Based Fault Localization - A First Experimental Evaluation. In 36th International Conference on Principles of Diagnosis and Resilient Systems (DX 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 136, pp. 3:1-3:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{schleich_et_al:OASIcs.DX.2025.3,
  author =	{Schleich, Jonas and Wotawa, Franz},
  title =	{{Combining Dynamic Slicing and Spectrum-Based Fault Localization - A First Experimental Evaluation}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Conference on Principles of Diagnosis and Resilient Systems (DX 2025)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:18},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-394-2},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{136},
  editor =	{Quinones-Grueiro, Marcos and Biswas, Gautam and Pill, Ingo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.DX.2025.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247927},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.DX.2025.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Software fault localization, program slicing, spectrum-based fault localization, automated debugging}
}

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Combining Dynamic Slicing and Spectrum-Based Fault Localization - A First Experimental Evaluation

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