Software mutational robustness
Created by W.Langdon from
gp-bibliography.bib Revision:1.7182
- @Article{Schulte:2014:GPEM,
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author = "Eric Schulte and Zachary P. Fry and Ethan Fast and
Westley Weimer and Stephanie Forrest",
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title = "Software mutational robustness",
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journal = "Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines",
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year = "2014",
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volume = "15",
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number = "3",
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pages = "281--312",
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month = sep,
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keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, genetic
improvement, SBSE, Mutational robustness, Mutation
testing, Proactive diversity, N-version programming,
Neutral landscapes",
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ISSN = "1389-2576",
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URL = "
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.416.675",
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DOI = "
doi:10.1007/s10710-013-9195-8",
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size = "32 pages",
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abstract = "Neutral landscapes and mutational robustness are
believed to be important enablers of evolvability in
biology. We apply these concepts to software, defining
mutational robustness to be the fraction of random
mutations to program code that leave a program's
behaviour unchanged. Test cases are used to measure
program behavior and mutation operators are taken from
earlier work on genetic programming. Although software
is often viewed as brittle, with small changes leading
to catastrophic changes in behaviour, our results show
surprising robustness in the face of random software
mutations. The paper describes empirical studies of the
mutational robustness of 22 programs, including 14
production software projects, the Siemens benchmarks,
and four specially constructed programs. We find that
over 30 percent of random mutations are neutral with
respect to their test suite. The results hold across
all classes of programs, for mutations at both the
source code and assembly instruction levels, across
various programming languages, and bear only a limited
relation to test suite coverage. We conclude that
mutational robustness is an inherent property of
software, and that neutral variants (i.e., those that
pass the test suite) often fulfil the program's
original purpose or specification. Based on these
results, we conjecture that neutral mutations can be
leveraged as a mechanism for generating software
diversity. We demonstrate this idea by generating a
population of neutral program variants and showing that
the variants automatically repair latent bugs. Neutral
landscapes also provide a partial explanation for
recent results that use evolutionary computation to
automatically repair software bugs.",
- }
Genetic Programming entries for
Eric Schulte
Zachary P Fry
Ethan Joseph Fast
Westley Weimer
Stephanie Forrest
Citations