Test data as an aid in proving program correctness

Authors:
Matthew Geller
Affiliations:
The Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Venue:
Communications of the ACM
Year:
1978

Citing 10
Cited 12

Proving Theorems about LISP Functions

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
The synthesis of loop predicates

Communications of the ACM
Inductive methods for proving properties of programs

Communications of the ACM
Calculating properties of programs by valuations on specific models

Proceedings of ACM conference on Proving assertions about programs
Automated generation of testcase datasets

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
Finite state modelling in program development

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
A new approach to program testing

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
SELECT—a formal system for testing and debugging programs by symbolic execution

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
Toward a theory of test data selection

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software
A view of program verification

Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software

A Theory of Fault-Based Testing

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Testability of Software Components

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Experimental results from an automatic test case generator

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM)
Critical slicing for software fault localization

ISSTA '96 Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis
On the Use of Transcendentals for Program Testing

Journal of the ACM (JACM)
On the proof of correctness of a calendar program

Communications of the ACM
Continuity in software systems

ISSTA '02 Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis
Theoretical and empirical studies on using program mutation to test the functional correctness of programs

POPL '80 Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
A hierarchical approach to program testing

ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Invariants and state in testing and formal methods

PASTE '05 Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGSOFT workshop on Program analysis for software tools and engineering
The future of library specification

Proceedings of the FSE/SDP workshop on Future of software engineering research
Checking models, proving programs, and testing systems

TAP'11 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Tests and proofs

Quantified Score

Hi-index	48.23

Visualization

Abstract

Proofs of program correctness tend to be long and tedious, whereas testing, though useful in detecting errors, usually does not guarantee correctness. This paper introduces a technique whereby test data can be used in proving program correctness. In addition to simplifying the process of providing correctness, this method simplifies the process of providing accurate specification for a program. The applicability of this technique to procedures and recursive programs is demonstrated.