Evaluation of deletion mutation operators in mutation testing of C# programs

Abstract

Deletion mutation operators were endorsed to be beneficial in effective evaluation of tests for C and Java in comparison to traditional structural mutation operators. They were also supposed to generate fewer equivalent mutants. In this work we present evaluation of deletion mutation operators in the context of structural and object-oriented operators used in first and second order mutation testing of C# programs. Deletion operators could surpass standard mutation operators in the lower number of generated mutants and decreased mutation testing time. Experiments on C# programs were conducted on statement and operator deletion mutation operators. Considering mutation time, it could be profitable to replace other structural mutation operators with the deletion ones, although there are no distinctive results in reduction of the number of equivalent mutants.