PySStuBs: Characterizing Single-Statement Bugs in Popular Open-Source Python Projects

Single-statement bugs (SStuBs) can have a severe impact on developer productivity. Despite usually being simple and not offering much of a challenge to fix, these bugs may still disturb a developer’s workflow and waste precious development time. However, few studies have paid attention to these simple bugs, focusing instead on bugs of any size and complexity. In this study, we explore the occurrence of SStuBs in some of the most popular open-source Python projects on GitHub, while also characterizing their patterns and distribution. We further compare these bugs to SStuBs found in a previous study on Java Maven projects. We find that these Python projects have different SStuB patterns than the ones in Java Maven projects and identify 7 new SStuB patterns. Our results may help uncover the importance of understanding these bugs for the Python programming language, and how developers can handle them more effectively.