{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,29]],"date-time":"2026-01-29T22:45:09Z","timestamp":1769726709976,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":43,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,3]],"date-time":"2021-01-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1609632000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.acm.org\/publications\/policies\/copyright_policy#Background"}],"funder":[{"name":"CORE Grant of National Research Fund, Luxembourg","award":["C17\/IS\/11686509\/CODEMATES"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["C17\/IS\/11686509\/CODEMATES"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\n            We introduce\n            <jats:italic>SEMu<\/jats:italic>\n            , a Dynamic Symbolic Execution technique that generates test inputs capable of killing stubborn mutants (killable mutants that remain undetected after a reasonable amount of testing).\n            <jats:italic>SEMu<\/jats:italic>\n            aims at mutant propagation (triggering erroneous states to the program output) by incrementally searching for divergent program behaviors between the original and the mutant versions. We model the mutant killing problem as a symbolic execution search within a specific area in the programs\u2019 symbolic tree. In this framework, the search area is defined and controlled by parameters that allow scalable and cost-effective mutant killing. We integrate\n            <jats:italic>SEMu<\/jats:italic>\n            in KLEE and experimented with Coreutils (a benchmark frequently used in symbolic execution studies). Our results show that our modeling plays an important role in mutant killing. Perhaps more importantly, our results also show that, within a two-hour time limit,\n            <jats:italic>SEMu<\/jats:italic>\n            kills 37% of the stubborn mutants, where KLEE kills none and where the mutant infection strategy (strategy suggested by previous research) kills 17%.\n          <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3425497","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,3]],"date-time":"2021-01-03T11:09:08Z","timestamp":1609672148000},"page":"1-23","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":25,"title":["Killing Stubborn Mutants with Symbolic Execution"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"30","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5295-1831","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thierry Titcheu","family":"Chekam","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg"}]},{"given":"Mike","family":"Papadakis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8312-1358","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Maxime","family":"Cordy","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg"}]},{"given":"Yves Le","family":"Traon","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,1,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/stvr.1696"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICST.2014.13"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","volume-title":"Introduction to Software Testing","author":"Ammann Paul","unstructured":"Paul Ammann and Jeff Offutt . 2008. Introduction to Software Testing . Cambridge University Press . Paul Ammann and Jeff Offutt. 2008. Introduction to Software Testing. Cambridge University Press."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jss.2013.02.061"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2568225.2568314"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2012.56"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_7_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI","author":"Cadar Cristian","year":"2008","unstructured":"Cristian Cadar , Daniel Dunbar , and Dawson R. Engler . 2008. KLEE: unassisted and automatic generation of high-coverage tests for complex systems programs . In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008 ). 209--224. http:\/\/www.usenix.org\/events\/osdi08\/tech\/full_papers\/cadar\/cadar.pdf. Cristian Cadar, Daniel Dunbar, and Dawson R. Engler. 2008. KLEE: unassisted and automatic generation of high-coverage tests for complex systems programs. In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2008). 209--224. http:\/\/www.usenix.org\/events\/osdi08\/tech\/full_papers\/cadar\/cadar.pdf."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_8_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10664-019-09778-7"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-78800-3_24"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_10_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TR.2018.2864678"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_11_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/32.92910"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_12_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.5555\/2780084.2780170"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_13_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TSE.2011.93"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_14_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2019.2952246"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_15_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2338965.2336762"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_16_1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering and 13th European Software Engineering Conference (FSE\u201911-ESEC\u201911)","author":"Harman Mark","year":"2025","unstructured":"Mark Harman , Yue Jia , and William B. 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Multiple mutation testing from finite state machines with symbolic inputs. In Testing Software and Systems Nina Yevtushenko Ana Rosa Cavalli and H\u00fcsn\u00fc Yenig\u00fcn (Eds.). Springer International Publishing Cham 108--125.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-67549-7_7"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_24_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/227607.227610"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_25_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2884781.2884845"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_26_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2931037.2931040"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_27_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSE.2015.103"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_28_1","volume-title":"Yves Le Traon, and Mark Harman","author":"Papadakis Mike","year":"2019","unstructured":"Mike Papadakis , Marinos Kintis , Jie Zhang , Yue Jia , Yves Le Traon, and Mark Harman . 2019 . Mutation testing advances: An analysis and survey. Advances in Computers, Vol. 112 . Elsevier , 275--378. 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