2025-03-052025-03-052024-10-30https://repositorio.ifal.edu.br/handle/123456789/890Mutation testing has attracted significant interest due to its reputation as a powerful criterion for test suite adequacy and its ability to guide test case generation. However, the presence of equivalent mutants hinders its use in industry. The Equivalent Mutant Problem has been proven undecidable, but manually detecting equivalent mutants is an error-prone and time- consuming task. Therefore, even partial solutions can help reduce this cost. To minimize this problem, we introduce an approach to suggest equivalent mutants. Our approach is based on automated behavioral tests, which consist of test cases based on the original program's behavior. We perform static analysis to automatically generate tests for the entities impacted by the mutation. For each analyzed mutant, our approach can suggest whether the mutant is equivalent or non-equivalent. In the case of non-equivalent mutants, our approach provides a test case capable of killing the mutant. For the suggested equivalent mutants, we also provide a ranking of mutants with a higher or lower likelihood of being truly equivalent. We tested our approach on a set of 1,542 mutants manually classified in previous works as either equivalent or non-equivalent. We found that the approach effectively suggests equivalent mutants, achieving over 93% accuracy in five of the eight studied subjects. Compared to the manual analysis of surviving mutants, our approach takes one-third of the time to suggest equivalent mutants and is 25 times faster in identifying non-equivalent mutants. We also conducted a study to discern the specific characteristics of mutants that our approach mistakenly classified as equivalent, generating false positives. Furthermore, our investigation delves into a comprehensive analysis of mutation operators, providing essential insights for professionals seeking to improve equivalent mutant detection accuracy and effectively mitigate the associated costs.ptSistema de InformaçãoMutantes equivalenteTestes de mutaçãoMutation testingEquivalente mutantAutomated testingTrabalho de Conclusão de CursoCIENCIAS EXATAS E DA TERRA::CIENCIA DA COMPUTACAO::METODOLOGIA E TECNICAS DA COMPUTACAO::SISTEMAS DE INFORMACAO