Work

An Automatic Localization Tool for Null Pointer Exceptions

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Null pointer exceptions are common software faults, but they are dangerous and can cause a program to crash if they occur. In addition, it is hard to find them by simply running test cases. When a null pointer exception occurs, the stack trace stored by the Java runtime environment can help us to locate the cause of the exception. In this paper, firstly, we propose an automatically null pointer exception localization approach guided by stack trace, from the null pointer dereference to the null value assignment point. Secondly, an empirical study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool on eight open source projects. The experimental results show that the tool is effective in locating the null pointer exception.

Source: IEEE Access

DOI: 10.1109/access.2019.2948366

Authors: Jing Duan, Shujuan Jiang, Qiao Yu, Kai Lu, Xu Zhang, Yiwen Yao

Institutions: Hohai University, China University of Mining and Technology, Jiangsu Normal University

Language: English

Topic: Software Testing and Debugging Techniques

Subfield: Software

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,750

Funder: National Natural Science Foundation of China