Logic Error Localization and Correction with Machine Learning (Student Abstract)

Abstract

We aim to propose a system repairing programs with logic errors to be functionally correct among different programming languages. Logic error program repair has always been a thorny problem: First, a logic error is usually harder to repair than a syntax error in a program because it has no diagnostic feedback from compilers. Second, it requires inferring in different ranges (i.e., the distance of related code lines) and tracking symbols across its pseudocode, source code, and test cases. Third, the logic error datasets are scarce, since an ideal logic error dataset should contain lots of components during the development procedure of a program, including a program specification, pseudocode, source code, test cases, and test reports (i.e., test case failure report). In our work, we propose novel solutions to these challenges. First, we introduce pseudocode information to assist logic error localization and correction. We construct a code-pseudocode graph to connect symbols across a source code and its pseudocode and then apply a graph neural network to localize and correct logic errors. Second, we collect logic errors generated in the process of syntax error repairing via DrRepair from 500 programs in the SPoC dataset and reconstruct them to our single logic error dataset, which we leverage to train and evaluate our models. Our experimental results show that we achieve 99.39% localization accuracy and 19.20% full repair accuracy on logic errors with five-fold cross-validation. Based on our current work, we will replenish and construct more complete public logic error datasets and propose a novel system to comprehend different programming languages from several perspectives and correct logic errors to be functionally correct.