From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on
	ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham
	autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6
Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada and software testing
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2021 12:32:40 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID: <87pmvky9lz.fsf@nightsong.com>
References: <871r84cq4r.fsf@nightsong.com>
	<5bc2434a-6784-47d6-ba66-50edff4f80f0n@googlegroups.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="158c5d4bee3779fbf0a272d27e09ef8a";
	logging-data="6444"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18YmbL4yZ/p52FfKqztzbNA"
User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.1 (gnu/linux)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:RSL5yHMQOL6pPadU+nG65NwLChA=
	sha1:TrCnXwGQUK1ivLjTEgc9tVtpxSs=
Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62379
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Gautier write-only address <gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com> writes:
> You can combine the power of fuzzing with the power of Ada's strong
> typing, implying standard Ada run-time checks (e.g. range checks),
> Read the following article for details:
> https://blog.adacore.com/running-american-fuzzy-lop-on-your-ada-code

Thanks, this is pretty interesting.  He runs AFL on three Ada programs:
Zip-Ada, and Ada libraries for reading YAML and JSON.  It finds bugs in
all three, though not very many.  It fits my picture that Ada programs
are less susceptible than C programs are, to the types of bugs that
fuzzing uncovers.

I do have to say that errors thrown by runtime checks on range types are
still program bugs, in the sense that they are type errors, that in
principle we should want to catch at compile time.