Effective Unit Test Generation for Java Null Pointer Exceptions
In this experience paper, we share our experience on enhancing automatic unit test generation to more effectively find Java null pointer exceptions (NPEs). NPEs are among the most common and critical errors in Java applications. However, as we demonstrate in this paper, existing unit test generation tools such as Randoop and EvoSuite are not sufficiently effective at catching NPEs. Specifically, their primary strategy of achieving high code coverage does not necessarily result in triggering diverse NPEs in practice. In this paper, we detail our observation on the limitations of current stateof-the-art unit testing tools in terms of NPE detection and introduce a new strategy to improve their effectiveness. Our strategy utilizes both static and dynamic analyses to guide the test case generator to focus specifically on scenarios that are likely to trigger NPEs. We implemented this strategy on top of EvoSuite, and evaluated our tool, NPETest, on 108 NPE benchmarks collected from 96 real-world projects. The results show that our NPE-guidance strategy can increase EvoSuite’s reproduction rate of the NPEs from 56.9% to 78.9%, a 38.7% improvement. Furthermore, NPETest successfully detected 77 previously unknown NPEs from an industry project
Thu 31 OctDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
10:30 - 12:00 | Test generationResearch Papers / Journal-first Papers at Gardenia Chair(s): Lingming Zhang University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | ||
10:30 15mTalk | Towards Understanding the Effectiveness of Large Language Models on Directed Test Input Generation Research Papers Zongze Jiang Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Ming Wen Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Jialun Cao Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Xuanhua Shi Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hai Jin Huazhong University of Science and Technology | ||
10:45 15mTalk | Distribution-aware Fairness Test Generation Journal-first Papers Sai Sathiesh Rajan Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Ezekiel Soremekun Royal Holloway, University of London, Yves Le Traon University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Sudipta Chattopadhyay Singapore University of Technology and Design | ||
11:00 15mTalk | Effective Unit Test Generation for Java Null Pointer Exceptions Research Papers Myungho Lee Korea University, Jiseong Bak Korea University, Seokhyeon Moon , Yoon-Chan Jhi Technology Research, Samsung SDS, Seoul, South Korea, Hakjoo Oh Korea University | ||
11:15 15mTalk | SlicePromptTest4J: High-coverage Test Generation using LLM via Method Slicing Research Papers Zejun Wang Peking University, Kaibo Liu Peking University, Ge Li Peking University, Zhi Jin Peking University | ||
11:30 15mTalk | DeepREST: Automated Test Case Generation for REST APIs Exploiting Deep Reinforcement Learning Research Papers Davide Corradini University of Verona, Zeno Montolli University of Verona, Michele Pasqua University of Verona, Mariano Ceccato University of Verona | ||
11:45 15mTalk | On the Evaluation of Large Language Models in Unit Test Generation Research Papers Lin Yang Tianjin University, Chen Yang Tianjin University, Shutao Gao Tianjin University, Weijing Wang College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Bo Wang Beijing Jiaotong University, Qihao Zhu DeepSeek-AI, Xiao Chu Huawei Cloud Computing Co. Ltd., Jianyi Zhou Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies Co., Ltd., Guangtai Liang Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies, Qianxiang Wang Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, Junjie Chen Tianjin University Pre-print | ||