This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB1001803) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61672045).
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Figure 1
(Color online) The call graph of Chart-2.
Figure 2
(Color online) Stack trace of defect Lang-1. Lines 469 and 472 are real faulty conditions.
| jGenProg | jKali | Nopol | ACS | HDR | ssFix | ELIXIR | JAID | CapGen | SimFix | Munal | |
| Chart | 0/4 | 0/2 | 1/1 | 0/0 | 2/– | 1/3 | 3/1 | 0/2 | 2/0 | 3/0 | 7/3 |
| Closure | –/– | –/– | –/– | –/– | 1/– | 0/1 | –/– | 0/1 | –/– | 0/0 | 8/1 |
| Lang | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 2/– | 1/1 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 0/1 | 10/0 |
| Math | 2/1 | 1/1 | 0/0 | 3/0 | 1/– | 0/4 | 1/1 | 1/0 | 1/0 | 1/3 | 7/2 |
| Time | 0/1 | 0/1 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 0/– | 0/1 | 1/0 | 0/0 | 0/0 | 1/0 | 9/0 |
| Total | 2/6 | 1/4 | 1/1 | 4/0 | 6/– | 2/10 | 6/2 | 1/3 | 4/0 | 5/4 | 41/6 |
| Strategy | Description | Defects$^{\rm~a)}$ |
| Excluding unexecuted statements | Exclude those statements not executed by failing test | All defects |
| Excluding unlikely candidates | Filter all non-related candidates based on their functionalities and complexities | L-1, 2, 4, 7, 9; M-5, 10; Ch-2; Cl-9; T-1, 4, 10 |
| Stack trace analysis | Locate faulty locations based on the stack trace information thrown by failing test cases | L-1, 5, 6; M-3, 4, 8; Ch-4, 9; Cl-2; T-2, 5, 7, 8, 10 |
| Locating undesirable value changes | Locate those statements that change the input values to the final faulty values of failing test cases | L-8; Cl-1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10; T-3, 9 |
| Checking programming practice | Identify those code that obviously violate some programming principles based on previous programming experience | L-6, 8; Ch-1, 7, 8 |
| Predicate switching | Inverse condition statements to get expected output, the inversed condition statement is the error location | L-3; Ch-1, 9; Cl-10 |
| Program understanding | Understand the logic of faulty program and the functionalities of relevant objects and methods | L-10; M-6, 9; Ch-3; Cl-9; T-3, 9 |
| a) L, M, Ch, Cl and T denote Lang, Math, Chart, Closure and Time project, respectively. | ||
| Strategy | Description | Defects |
| Add NullPointer checker | Add null pointer checker before using the object to avoid NullPointerException | M-4; Ch-4; Cl-2 |
| Return expected output | Return the expected value according to the assertions | L-2, 7, 9; M-3, 5, 10; T-1, 3 |
| Replace an identifier with a similar one | Replace an identifier with another one that has the similar name and same type in the scope | L-6, 8; Ch-7, 8 |
| Compare test executions | Generate patches by comparing the failed tests with those passed tests with similar test inputs | L-2, 5 |
| Interpret comments | Generate patches by directly interpreting comments written in natural language | M-9; Cl-1, 5, 7, 9; T-8, 9 |
| Imitate similar code element | Imitate the code that is near the error location and has similar structures | L-4, 5; M-6, 8; Ch-1, 2, 7, 9; Cl-3, 8, 10; T-5, 7, 10 |
| Fix by program understanding | Generate patches by understanding the functionality of program | L-1, 3, 9, 10; M-6, 9; Ch-2, 3; Cl-3, 8; T-1, 2, 4, 10 |
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