Test Case Generation using Symbolic Execution

Abstract

Testing is a well-known technique for identifying errors in software programs. Testing can be done in two ways: Static analysis and Dynamic analysis. Symbolic execution plays a vital role in static analysis for test case generation and to find the unreachable path with minimum test cases. Unreachable path is a part of a program which can never be executed i.e., the symbolic execution doesn’t continue for that path and the current execution stops there. It generates a test suite for loop-free programs that is achieved by path coverage. In the best case program loops implies increase in the number of paths exponentially and in the worst case the program will not terminate. The functions of symbolic execution are test input generation, unreachable path detection, finding bugs in software programs, debugging. In this paper, we focus on dead code detection and test input generation using symbolic execution. Our execution for Java programs uses Java Path Finder (JPF) model tester. Our analysis shows that the symbolic execution method can be used to reduce symbolic execution time and to find out the unreachable path with less number of test cases.