Abstract
We Present a novel scheme for categorizing coding faults. Our grammar based
acheme uses the notion of syntactic transformers and is automatable. The
classification that results from our scheme can be used by researchers
investigatin the effectiveness of software testing techniques. In these
respects our scheme is significantly different from several proposed in the
past by other researchers. We haveused it to categorize the ten year log
of errorsof TEX reported by Knuth. For each fault classified, we also
provide, whereever possible, the precise substring that constitutes the fault
. The entire error log and the associated program is in public domain and
hence our categorization can be verified. We also provide a fault
classification algorithm that uses top-down strategy to find differences
between the two parse trees, annotated with syntatic transformers, to
classify various faults. We claim that such an algorithm ca be
integrated within a software developement enviroment and used as a low cost
mechanism for monitoring and classifying faults.
