Bug-Inducing Language Constructs

Reducing bugs in software is a key issue in software development. Many techniques and tools have been developed to automatically identify bugs. These techniques vary in their complexity, accuracy and cost. In this paper we empirically investigate the language constructs which frequently contribute to bugs. Revision histories of eight open source projects developed in multiple languages are processed to extract bug-inducing language constructs. Twenty six different language constructs and syntax elements are identified. We find that most frequent bug-inducing language constructs are function calls, assignments, conditions, pointers, use of NULL, variable declaration, function declaration and return statement. These language constructs account for more than 70 percent of bug-inducing hunks. Different projects are statistically correlated in terms of frequencies of bug-inducing language constructs. Developers within a project and between different projects also have similar frequencies of bug-inducing language constructs. Quality assurance developers can focus code reviews on these frequent bug-inducing language constructs before committing changes.