Paper Info
Title
A Comprehensive Study of Pseudo-tested Methods.
Abstract
Pseudo-tested methods are defined as follows: they are covered by the test suite, yet no test case fails when the method body is removed, i.e., when all the effects of this method are suppressed. This intriguing concept was coined in 2016, by Niedermayr and colleagues, who showed that such methods are systematically present, even in well-tested projects with high statement coverage. This work presents a novel analysis of pseudo-tested methods. First, we run a replication of Niedermayr’s study with 28K+ methods, enhancing its external validity thanks to the use of new tools and new study subjects. Second, we perform a systematic characterization of these methods, both quantitatively and qualitatively with an extensive manual analysis of 101 pseudo-tested methods. The first part of the study confirms Niedermayr’s results: pseudo-tested methods exist in all our subjects. Our in-depth characterization of pseudo-tested methods leads to two key insights: pseudo-tested methods are significantly less tested than the other methods; yet, for most of them, the developers would not pay the testing price to fix this situation. This calls for future work on targeted test generation to specify those pseudo-tested methods without spending developer time.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1007/s10664-018-9653-2
Empirical Software Engineering
Keywords
Field
DocType
Software testing, Software developers, Pseudo-tested methods, Test quality, Program analysis
Test suite,Data mining,Software engineering,Computer science,Test quality,Program analysis,External validity,Software testing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
abs/1807.05030
3.0
Empirical Software Engineering, Springer Verlag, 2018 pp 1-31
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.34
17
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Oscar Luis Vera-Pérez151.09
Benjamin Danglot2242.32
Martin Monperrus31239.13
Benoit Baudry44510.60