关键词: 错误定位, 软件调试, 秩函数, 基因表达式编程, 软件测试

Abstract: Fault location is the most important and most time-consuming part of software debugging. Any improvement in error location can significantly reduce software costs, and the choice of ranking function has become a top priority. This paper presents a fault localization algorithm with gene expression programming techniques based on spectrum to adapt the program to find the ranking function efficiently, and proposes a new fault localization algorithm. First, it extracts a subset of four types of the test case coverage information and the execution result information from the program; then, it trains the optimal ranking function by gene expression programming techniques; finally, it calculates the suspicious values of each statement by the ranking function and locates the fault by suspicious statement with the descending suspicious values. The experiment results show that using the fault location method based on gene expression programming algorithm is more accurate and is more significantly efficient than the ranking functions of Tarantula, Ochiai, etc.

Key words: fault localization, program debugging, ranking function, Gene Expression Programming（GEP）, software testing