Testing Erlang refactorings with QuickCheck

Abstract

Refactoring is a technique for improving the design of existing programs without changing their behaviour. Wrangler is a tool built at the University of Kent to support Erlang program refactoring; the Wrangler tool is written in Erlang. In this paper we present the use of a novel testing tool, Quviq QuickCheck, for testing the implementation of Wrangler. QuickCheck is a specification-based testing tool for Erlang. With QuickCheck, programs are tested by writing properties in a restricted logic, and using the tool these properties are tested in randomly generated test cases. This paper first gives overviews of Wrangler and Quviq QuickCheck, then discusses the various ways in which refactorings can be validated, and finally shows how QuickCheck can be used to test the correctness of refactorings in an efficient way. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.