Runtime Exception Detection in Java Programs Using Symbolic Execution

TitleRuntime Exception Detection in Java Programs Using Symbolic Execution
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsKádár I, Hegedűs P, Ferenc R
Conference NameProceedings of the 13th Symposium on Programming Languages and Software Tools (SPLST 2013)
Pagination215–229
Date Publishedaug
PublisherUniversity of Szeged
Conference LocationSzeged, Hungary
KeywordsJava runtime exception, Java Virtual Machine, rule checking, symbolic execution
Abstract

Most of the runtime failures of a software system can be revealed during test execution only, which has a very high cost. In Java programs, runtime failures are manifested as unhandled runtime exceptions. In this paper we present an approach and tool for detecting runtime exceptions in Java programs without having to execute tests on the software. We use the symbolic execution technique to implement the approach. By executing the methods of the program symbolically we can determine those execution branches that throw exceptions. Our algorithm is able to generate concrete test inputs also that cause the program to fail in runtime. We used the Symbolic PathFinder extension of the Java PathFinder as the symbolic execution engine. Besides small example codes we evaluated our algorithm on three open source systems: jEdit, ArgoUML, and log4j. We found multiple errors in the log4j system that were also reported as real bugs in its bug tracking system.

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