Testing syntax and semantic coverage of Java language compilers

Software testing is a critical and important stage of the application software development life-cycle. Testing is a verification activity that affects the overall software quality. The verification of critical and dependable computer software such as real-time safety-critical software systems consumes about 50% of the project time. In this work, we consider testing compilers. Since a compiler is a highly usable software, an increased emphasis on reliability requires a careful testing before releasing the compiler. In compiler testing, the compiler implementation is verified to conform to the specified language syntax and semantic available in the standard language documentation. In this work, an algorithm is designed and a tool is developed to automate the generation of test cases to check the language syntax. In addition, we propose a heuristic approach to cover language semantics. Since Java is a relatively new programming language, we concentrate on testing the adherence of new Java compilers to the language syntax and semantics.