Abstract

Context-free grammars describe the formal structure of complex texts, such as PDF documents, configuration files or computer programs. However, grammar bugs can cause the software systems processing these texts to fail. This study develops a fully automatic approach to find and fix grammar bugs using only a given set of passing and failing tests, the grammar and the executable system. It identifies fault locations through the execution differences between the passing and failing tests and incrementally patches the faults using small-scale grammar transformations. It finds bugs in production grammars and fixes grammars written by students in a postgraduate compiler course.

BibTeX Citation

@phdthesis{stellies23/raselimo,
  title   = {Fault Localization and Repair for Grammarware},
  author  = {Moeketsi Raselimo},
  year    = {2023},
  school  = {Stellenbosch University}
}