The Effects of Soft Assertion on Spectrum-Based Fault Localization

This paper investigates the negative effects of soft assertion on the accuracy of Spectrum-based Fault Localization (SBFL). Soft assertion is a kind of test assertion which continues test case execution even after an assertion failure occurs. In general, the execution path becomes longer if the test case fails by a soft assertion. Hence, soft assertion will decrease the accuracy of SBFL which leverages the execution path of failed tests. In this study, we call the change of execution path due to soft assertion as path pollution. Our experimental results show that soft assertion actually reduces the accuracy of SBFL in 35% of faults.