Example For Structural Code Coverages

Let’s provide an example of structural code coverages. The post is aligned with the Black Box Software Testing Foundations course (BBST) designed by Rebecca Fiedler, Cem Kaner, and James Bach.

We will provide examples for the following structures:

• statement coverage
• branch coverage
• multi-condition coverage
• loop coverage

Here is a simple program in pseudocode:

INPUT A FROM KEYBOARD
INPUT B FROM KEYBOARD
INPUT N FROM KEYBOARD
IF (A < 3) PRINT A
IF (B == "ZABOK") PRINT B
WHILE (0 < N < 10) {N = N + 1}

To achieve statement 100% code coverage, we need to run one test:

Enter 2 for A, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter 1 for N

We need two test cases:

Enter 2 for A, enter "ZABOK" for B
Enter 3 for A and enter "AMSTERDAM" for B

Note that branch coverage includes the test for statement coverage

All combinations of logical expressions. We need a table for that:

We have 36 tests.

We have nine tests:

Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 1
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 2
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 3
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 4
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 5
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 6
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 7
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 8
Enter 2 for, enter "ZABOK" for B, enter for N 9

Originally published at https://blog.tentamen.eu on January 31, 2020.