Undocumented and unchecked: Exceptions that spell trouble

Maria Kechagia, Diomidis Spinellis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

42 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Modern programs rely on large application programming interfaces (apis). The Android framework comprises 231 core apis, and is used by countless developers. We examine a sample of 4,900 distinct crash stack traces from 1,800 different Android applications, looking for Android api methods with undocumented exceptions that are part of application crashes. For the purposes of this study, we take as a reference the version 15 of the Android api, which matches our stack traces. Our results show that a significant number of crashes (19%) might have been avoided if these methods had the corresponding exceptions documented as part of their interface.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Proceedings
PublisherACM
Pages312-315
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450328630
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 May 2014
Externally publishedYes
Event11th International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Hyderabad, India
Duration: 31 May 20141 Jun 2014

Publication series

Name11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference11th International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2014
Country/TerritoryIndia
CityHyderabad
Period31/05/141/06/14

Keywords

  • APIs
  • Exceptions
  • Mobile applications
  • Stack traces

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