The Csaw C Mutation Tool: Initial Results

There is a perceived lack of mutation tools for the C language and information about the tools that are available was not widely disseminated until recently. This has lead to the development of a small set of programs to support the use of mutation on C language programs as part of a research effort into the use of automatically generated test sets. This paper describes a lightweight C language mutation tool and some initial results from its application to sorting algorithms. The paper describes how kill rates could be improved using a different encoding for Boolean values and details how the use of CPU time can be used as an additional means of detecting mutants.