Test coverage analysis based on program slicing

Coverage analysis is a structural testing technique that helps to eliminate gaps in a test suite and determines when to stop testing. To compute test coverage, this letter proposes a new concept—coverage about variables, based on program slicing. By adding powers according to their importance, the users can focus on the important variables to obtain higher test coverage. The letter presents methods to compute basic coverage based on program structure graphs. In most cases, the coverage obtained in the letter is bigger than that obtained by a traditional measure, because the coverage about a variable takes only the related codes into account.