Re: test suite generation for Fortran compiler testing

henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) writes:
|> Nick Maclaren <nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
|>
|> >That myth about needing to exercise every code segment has been
|> >around for at least 35 years but, like all good myths, tramples
|> >ruthlessly on the actual facts...
|>
|> It's not a myth; it's merely not the whole story. Path coverage
|> testing and statement coverage testing are two different things. Path
|> coverage testing is *better*, but it's also rather harder to do.
|> Statement coverage testing isn't as good, but it's a lot better than
|> nothing and it finds a lot of bugs.


The myth is that it is adequate - see the previous postings for the
context. The harm that it does is that naive programmers put serious
effort into achieving completeness of statement coverage and believe
that, having done so, the program is well tested.


Whereas, in fact, there is no point in wasting any effort in even
ATTEMPTING complete statement coverage. The initial target should be
a thorough set of tests with empirical coverage rules, and the minimal
completeness target wirth considering is the path one. There are
harder completeness targets beyond the path one, too.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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