Constructing Subtle Faults Using Higher Order Mutation Testing

Traditional mutation testing considers only first order mutants, created by the injection of a single fault. Often these first order mutants denote trivial faults that are easily killed. This paper investigates higher order mutants (HOMs). It introduces the concept of a subsuming HOM; one that is harder to kill than the first order mutants from which it is constructed. By definition, subsuming HOMs denote subtle fault combinations. The paper reports the results of an empirical study into subsuming HOMs, using six benchmark programs. This is the largest study of mutation testing to date. To overcome the exponential explosion in the number of mutants considered, the paper introduces a search based approach to the identification of subsuming HOMs. Results are presented for a greedy algorithm, a genetic algorithm and a hill climbing algorithm.