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CompCert is the first realistic formally verified compiler: it provides a machine-checked mathematical proof that the code it generates matches the source code. Yet, there could be loopholes in this approach. We comprehensively analyze…

Test input generators are an important part of property-based testing (PBT) frameworks, and a key expectation is that they be capable of producing all acceptable elements that satisfy both the function's input type and the…

Decompilation transforms low-level program languages (PL) (e.g., binary code) into high-level PLs (e.g., C/C++). It has been widely used when analysts perform security analysis on software (systems) whose source code is unavailable, such as…

Large language models (LLMs) are trained through multi-stage pipelines over heterogeneous data sources, yet developers lack a principled way to pinpoint the specific data responsible for an observed behavior. This lack of observability…

Code generation models can help improve many common software tasks ranging from code completion to defect prediction. Most of the existing benchmarks for code generation LLMs focus on code authoring or code completion. Surprisingly, there…

As scientific applications extend to the simulation of more and more complex systems, they involve an increasing number of abstraction levels, at each of which errors can emerge and across which they can propagate; tools for correctness…

During compilation from Java source code to bytecode, some information is irreversibly lost. In other words, compilation and decompilation of Java code is not symmetric. Consequently, decompilation, which aims at producing source code from…

Source code summarization involves creating brief descriptions of source code in natural language. These descriptions are a key component of software documentation such as JavaDocs. Automatic code summarization is a prized target of…

Despite demonstrating remarkable performance across a wide range of tasks, large language models (LLMs) have also been found to frequently produce outputs that are incomplete or selectively omit key information. In sensitive domains, such…

Even competent programmers make mistakes. Automatic verification can detect errors, but leaves the frustrating task of finding the erroneous line of code to the user. This paper presents an automatic approach for identifying potential error…

Metamorphic testing (MT) is a simple yet effective technique to alleviate the oracle problem in software testing. The underlying idea of MT is to test a software system by checking whether metamorphic relations (MRs) hold among multiple…

Program debloating aims to remove unused code to reduce performance overhead, attack surfaces, and maintenance costs. Over time, debloating has evolved across multiple layers (container, library, and application), each building on the…

As the potential for neural networks to augment our daily lives grows, ensuring their quality through effective testing, debugging, and maintenance is essential. This is especially the case as we acknowledge the prospects of negative…

Empirical and LLM-based research in model-driven engineering increasingly relies on datasets of software models, for instance, to train or evaluate machine learning techniques for modeling support. These datasets have a significant impact…

As developers debug, developers formulate hypotheses about the cause of the defect and gather evidence to test these hypotheses. To better understand the role of hypotheses in debugging, we conducted two studies. In a preliminary study, we…

A number of automated techniques and tools were proposed in the research literature over the years which aim to support the spreadsheet developer in the process of testing and debugging a faulty spreadsheet. One underlying assumption of…

The task of code generation from natural language (NL2Code) has become extremely popular, especially with the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, efforts to quantify and track this progress have suffered due to a lack of…

In the challenging field of introductory programming, high enrollments and failure rates drive us to explore tools and systems to enhance student outcomes, especially automated tools that scale to large cohorts. This paper presents and…

Measuring and evaluating source code similarity is a fundamental software engineering activity that embraces a broad range of applications, including but not limited to code recommendation, duplicate code, plagiarism, malware, and smell…

An "adequate" test suite should effectively find all inconsistencies between a system's requirements/specifications and its implementation. Practitioners frequently use code coverage to approximate adequacy, while academics argue that…