A Generalized Model for Algorithmic Debugging

Abstract

Abstract. Algorithmic debugging is a semi-automatic debugging technique that is present in practically all mature programming languages. In this paper we claim that the state of the practice in algorithmic debugging is a step forward compared with the state of the theory. In particular, we argue that novel techniques for algorithmic debugging cannot be supported by the standard internal data structures, such as the Execution Tree (ET), used in this technique, and hence a generalization of the standard definitions and algorithms is needed. We identify two specific problems of the standard formulation and implementations of algorithmic debugging, and we propose a reformulation to solve both problems. The reformulation has been done in a paradigm-independent manner to make it useful and reusable in different programming languages.

A Survey of Algorithmic Debugging

“…For instance, it is usual to allow for other answers beyond valid and invalid, such as don't know/maybe [Wlodzimierz et al 1988] to avoid answering difficult questions, or allowing for the inadmissible answer [Pereira 1986;Naish 1997b] for calls to subprograms with unexpected parameters (see Section 6.4 for details). Recently, one of the authors of this paper has participated in the proposal of an extension of the general schema [Insa and Silva 2015b], but for the sake of simplicity we maintain the original schema as presented in Figures 1 and 2.…”

“…It was not until 2006 that Thomas Davie and Olaf Chitil [Davie and Chitil 2006b] proposed another way of reducing the number of questions: transforming the own debugging tree before the strategies traverse it. Later, David Insa and Josep Silva proposed a taxonomy [Insa and Silva 2015b] that classifies the transformations into three groups: (A) source code transformations, (B) execution transformations, and (C) debugging tree transformations. We describe in the following the main transformations proposed so far.…”

Optimization Techniques for Algorithmic Debugging

“…In this chapter, we propose a new redefinition [53] of Algorithmic Debugging (AD) in such a way that:…”