Automatic Program Repair Based on Version-Space Algebra

作者：Xu Yong; Wu Guo-Qing; Yuan Men-Ting; Huang Bo^*

来源：Acta Electronica Sinica, 2017, 45(10): 2498-2505.

DOI：10.3969/j.issn.0372-2112.2017.10.026

• Automatic derivation
• Automatic programs
• Directed mutation
• Hypothesis space
• Inductive learning
• Inductive learning techniques
• Mutation operators
• Version space algebra

Automatic program repair based on code enumeration exploits mutation operators to fix buggy programs by mutating the faulty statements. Its effectiveness is hindered by lack of grammar-directed mutation and limited number of mutation operators. This paper proposes a new automatic program repair method based on version space algebra, which uses inductive learning techniques to automatically produce repair solution for the faulty statement of buggy program. Specifically, the proposed method has the following features: (1) automatic derivation of version spaces from grammars, (2) defining consistency of version space according to its type, and (3) combining static and type checking with version space algebra. Experimental results show the proposed method outperforms other existing automatic program repair approaches in terms of repair success rate, and static and type-checking mechanism can prune the hypothesis space efficiently.

• 出版日期2017
• 单位上海大学