A Synthesis of Logical and Probabilistic Reasoning for Program Understanding and Debugging

2013/03/06 by Lisa J. Burnell, Eric Horvitz, Burnell, Lisa J. +1
Computer Science · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Software Engineering Research #Software Reliability and Analysis Research #Software Testing and Debugging Techniques

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1303.1488

openalex publication_date 2013/03/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We describe the integration of logical and uncertain reasoning methods to identify the likely source and location of software problems. To date, software engineers have had few tools for identifying the sources of error in complex software packages. We describe a method for diagnosing software problems through combining logical and uncertain reasoning analyses. Our preliminary results suggest that such methods can be of value in directing the attention of software engineers to paths of an algorithm that have the highest likelihood of harboring a programming error.

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