Automated Repair of High Inaccuracies in Numerical Programs

Rounding errors are introduced pervasively when using floating-point arithmetic to approximate real arithmetic. The accumulation or catastrophic cancellation of rounding errors in numerical programs may produce high inaccuracy results, which can cause serious software failures once being triggered. High inaccuracies are known hard to debug and fix manually for developers. Hence, the automated techniques are desired for solving the high inaccuracy problem. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for automated repair of high-inaccuracy bugs in numerical programs. The framework includes the phases of detecting high-inaccuracy bugs, localizing the buggy code, generating and validating the patches, and synthesizing the repaired program at last. Based on this framework, we develop a prototype tool for repairing high inaccuracies in numerical programs. Our preliminary experimental results are encouraging.