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Related papers: SmartFL: Semantics Based Probabilistic Fault Local…

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Automated fault localization requires connecting an observed test failure to the responsible method across thousands of candidates--a task that purely statistical approaches handle with limited precision and that LLMs cannot yet handle at…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Mahdi Farzandway , Fatemeh Ghassemi

Providing timely and personalized guidance for students' programming assignments, offers significant practical value for helping students complete assignments and enhance their learning. In recent years, various automated Fault Localization…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-10-01 Fang Liu , Tianze Wang , Li Zhang , Zheyu Yang , Jing Jiang , Zian Sun

Fault localization is one of the most time-consuming and error-prone parts of software debugging. There are several tools for helping developers in the fault localization process, however, they mostly target programs written in Java and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-08-30 Qusay Idrees Sarhan , Attila Szatmari , Rajmond Toth , Arpad Beszedes

Fault localization (FL) is a critical step in debugging, which typically relies on repeated executions to pinpoint faulty code regions. However, repeated executions can be impractical in the presence of non-deterministic failures or high…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Ahmadreza Saboor Yaraghi , Golnaz Gharachorlu , Sakina Fatima , Lionel C. Briand , Ruiyuan Wan , Ruifeng Gao

Debugging is one of the most time-consuming and expensive tasks in software development. Several formula-based fault localization (FBFL) methods have been proposed, but they fail to guarantee a set of diagnoses across all failing tests or…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Pedro Orvalho , Mikoláš Janota , Vasco Manquinho

Over the past decade, Deep Learning (DL) has become an integral part of our daily lives. This surge in DL usage has heightened the need for developing reliable DL software systems. Given that fault localization is a critical task in…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-11-14 Mohammad Mehdi Morovati , Amin Nikanjam , Foutse Khomh

Non-deterministically behaving (i.e., flaky) tests hamper regression testing as they destroy trust and waste computational and human resources. Eradicating flakiness in test suites is therefore an important goal, but automated debugging…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Martin Gruber , Gordon Fraser

Despite the proven applicability of the statistical methods in automatic fault localization, these approaches are biased by data collected from different executions of the program. This biasness could result in unstable statistical models…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2017-12-12 Farid Feyzi , Saeed Parsa

Software testing is essential for the reliable development of complex software systems. A key step in software testing is fault localization, which uses test data to pinpoint failure-inducing combinations for further diagnosis. Existing…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-30 Yi Ji , Simon Mak , Ryan Lekivetz , Joseph Morgan

Fault Localization (FL), in which a developer seeks to identify which part of the code is malfunctioning and needs to be fixed, is a recurring challenge in debugging. To reduce developer burden, many automated FL techniques have been…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Sungmin Kang , Gabin An , Shin Yoo

Fault Localization (FL) aims to automatically localize buggy lines of code, a key first step in many manual and automatic debugging tasks. Previous FL techniques assume the provision of input tests, and often require extensive program…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Aidan Z. H. Yang , Ruben Martins , Claire Le Goues , Vincent J. Hellendoorn

Spectrum-based fault localization (SBFL) works well for single-fault programs but its accuracy decays for increasing fault numbers. We present FLITSR (Fault Localization by Iterative Test Suite Reduction), a novel SBFL extension that…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-05-07 Dylan Callaghan , Bernd Fischer

Novice programmers often face challenges in fault localization due to their limited experience and understanding of programming syntax and logic. Traditional methods like Spectrum-Based Fault Localization (SBFL) and Mutation-Based Fault…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Hexiang Xu , Hengyuan Liu , Yonghao Wu , Xiaolan Kang , Xiang Chen , Yong Liu

Background: Debugging is a key task during the software development cycle. Spectrum-based Fault Localization (SFL) is a promising technique to improve and automate debugging. SFL techniques use control-flow spectra to pinpoint the most…

Software fault localization is one of the most expensive, tedious, and time-consuming activities in program debugging. This activity becomes even much more challenging in Software Product Line (SPL) systems due to the variability of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-09-22 Kien-Tuan Ngo , Thu-Trang Nguyen , Son Nguyen , Hieu Dinh Vo

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in multiple software engineering tasks including code generation, program repair, code summarisation, and test generation. Fault localisation is instrumental in enabling automated debugging…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-10-03 Yonghao Wu , Zheng Li , Jie M. Zhang , Mike Papadakis , Mark Harman , Yong Liu

Mutation-based Fault Localization (MBFL) has been widely explored for automated software debugging, leveraging artificial mutants to identify faulty code entities. However, MBFL faces significant challenges due to interference mutants…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Hengyuan Liu , Zheng Li , Donghua Wang , Yankai Wu , Xiang Chen , Yong Liu

Fault Localization (FL) is an essential step during the debugging process. With the strong capabilities of code comprehension, the recent Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated promising performance in diagnosing bugs in the code.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Yihao Qin , Shangwen Wang , Yiling Lou , Jinhao Dong , Kaixin Wang , Xiaoling Li , Xiaoguang Mao

In a buggy configurable system, configuration-dependent bugs cause the failures in only certain configurations due to unexpected interactions among features. Manually localizing configuration-dependent faults in configurable systems could…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-11-20 Son Nguyen

Maintenance is a dominant component of software cost, and localizing reported defects is a significant component of maintenance. We propose a scalable approach that leverages the natural language present in both defect reports and source…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2012-11-14 Zachary P. Fry , Westley Weimer