Combining static analysis and test generation for C program debugging

Abstract

This paper presents our ongoing work on a tool prototype called sante (Static ANalysis and TEsting), implementing a combination of static analysis and structural program testing for detection of run-time errors in C programs. First, a static analysis tool (Frama-C) is called to generate alarms when it cannot ensure the absence of run-time errors. Second, these alarms guide a structural test generation tool (PathCrawler) trying to confirm alarms by activating bugs on some test cases. Our experiments on real-life software show that this combination can outperform the use of each technique independently. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.