From Behaviour Preservation to Behaviour Modification: Constraint-Based Mutant Generation

The efficiency of mutation analysis depends heavily on its capability to mutate programs in such a way that they remain executable and exhibit deviating behaviour. Whereas the former requires knowledge about the syntax and static semantics of the programming language, the latter requires some least understanding of its dynamic semantics, i.e., how expressions are evaluated. The authors present an approach that is knowledgeable enough to generate only mutants that are both syntactically and semantically correct and likely exhibit non-equivalent behaviour. Their approach builds on the authors own prior work on constraint-based refactoring tools, and works by negating behaviour-preserving constraints.