Investigating Different Metrics for Evaluation and Selection of Mutation Operators for Java

Abstract

Mutation testing is a successful and powerful technique, specifically designed for injecting the artificial faults. Although it is effective at revealing the faults, test suite assessment and its reduction, however, suffer from the expense of executing a large number of mutants. The researchers have proposed different types of cost reduction techniques in the literature. These techniques highly depend on the inspection of mutation operators. Several metrics have been evolved for the same. The selective mutation technique is most frequently used by the researchers. In this paper, the authors investigate different metrics for evaluating the traditional mutation operators for Java. Results on 13 Java programs indicate how grouping few operators can impact the effectiveness of an adequate and minimal test suite, and how this could provide several cost benefits.