From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3315dcc90287cdfa,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!proxad.net!proxad.net!62.253.162.218.MISMATCH!news-in.ntli.net!newsrout1-win.ntli.net!ntli.net!news.highwinds-media.com!newspeer1-win.ntli.net!newsfe6-gui.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "Derek M. Jones" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Mutations and type usage in Ada Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:01:58 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 86.15.173.248 X-Complaints-To: http://www.ntlworld.com/netreport X-Trace: newsfe6-gui.ntli.net 1139850118 86.15.173.248 (Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:01:58 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:01:58 GMT Organization: ntl Cablemodem News Service Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2873 Date: 2006-02-13T17:01:58+00:00 List-Id: All, To what extent will Ada type checking cause mutated programs, where some of the variables have been changed, to be flagged at compile time? I have had people tell me stories of mutated Fortran and C programs successfully compiling and passing all the test cases (I have had no luck tracking down papers giving details; most papers discuss what happens when operators are changed, statement deleted, etc; I am interested in what happens when just the variables are changed). Does anybody know of any mutation work with Ada that involves changing the variables? Whether or not a change of variable will result in a compile time error will depend on the extent to which a program makes use of the Ada type system. For instance, if all my variables have type integer then the switching them around is unlikely to generate a compile time message. Does anybody know of any measurements of Ada source that have looked at how 'strongly' they are typed? That is, do many developers use integer everywhere, or do that always create a new type for everything? My experience with Pascal (yes, Pascal is not Ada) was that many programmers would not spend the time needed to think about the type that needed to be created. Perhaps some of these people have been sucked into Ada and managed to avoid the 'type safety' thought police :-)