Optimal Insertion of Software Probes in Well-Delimited Programs

A standard technique for monitoring software testing activities is to instrument the module under test with counters or probes before testing begins; then, during testing, data generated by these probes can be used to identify portions of as yet unexercised code. In this paper the effect of the disc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering 1982-01, Vol.SE-8 (1), p.34-42
Main Author: Probert, R.L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Branch execution
Code standards
Computer languages
Computer programming
Control
control structures
Counting circuits
execution count
flowgraphs
Graph theory
Graphs
Instruments
Monitoring
monitors
probe basis
Probes
program instrumentation
programming language design
Software
software probes
Software standards
Software testing
spanning trees
Structure
Structured
structured programs
System testing
Testing
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Summary:A standard technique for monitoring software testing activities is to instrument the module under test with counters or probes before testing begins; then, during testing, data generated by these probes can be used to identify portions of as yet unexercised code. In this paper the effect of the disciplined use of language features for explicitly delimiting control flow constructs is investigated with respect to the corresponding ease of software instrumentation. In particular, assuming all control constructs are explicitly delimited, for example, by END IF or equivalent statements, an easily programmed method is given for inserting a minimum number of probes for monitoring statement and branch execution counts without disrupting source code structure or paragraphing. The use of these probes, called statement probes, is contrasted with the use of standard (branch) probes for execution monitoring. It is observed that the results apply to well-delimited modules written in a wide variety of programming languages, in particular, Ada.
ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.1982.234772