Do Exceptional Behavior Tests Matter on Spectrum-Based Fault Localization?

Debugging is a heavy task in software development. Computer-assisted debugging is expected to reduce these costs. Spectrum-based Fault Localization (SBFL) is one of the most actively studied computer-assisted debugging techniques. SBFL aims to identify the location of faulty code elements based on the execution paths of tests. Previous research reports that the accuracy of SBFL is affected by test types, such as flaky tests. Our research focuses on exceptional behavior tests to reveal the impact of such tests on SBFL. Since separating exceptional handling from normal control flow enables developers to increase program robustness, we think the execution paths of exceptional behavior tests are different from the ones of normal control flow tests, which means that the differences significantly affect the accuracy of SBFL. In this study, we investigated the accuracy of SBFL on two types of faults: faults that occurred in the real software development process and artificially generated faults. As a result, our study reveals that SBFL tends to be more accurate when all failing tests are exceptional behavior tests than when failing tests include no exceptional behavior tests.