Test-Adequacy Assessment Using Program Mutation
The general problem of determining whether a mutant is equiva-
lent to its parent is undecidable and equivalent to the halting problem.
Hence, in most practical situations, determination of equivalent mutants
is done by the tester through careful analysis. Some methods for the au-
tomated detection of equivalent mutants are pointed to under Biblio-
graphic Notes.
It should be noted that the problem of deciding the equivalence of
a mutant in mutation testing is analogous to that of deciding whether
a given path is infeasible in, say, MC/DC or data-flow testing. Hence,
it is unwise to consider the problem of isolating equivalent mutants
from nonequivalent ones as something that makes mutation testing less ...