Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

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Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engappai

Automated test case generation for path coverage by using grey prediction
evolution algorithm with improved scatter search strategy
Gaocheng Cai, Qinghua Su ∗, Zhongbo Hu ∗
School of Information and Mathematics, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords:
Automated test case generation
Grey prediction evolution algorithm
Improved scatter search strategy
Path coverage
Automated test case generation for path coverage (ATCG-PC), as an important task in software testing, aims to
achieve the highest path coverage of a tested program by using as little computational overhead as possible. In
ATCG-PC, ‘‘similar paths are usually executed by similar test cases’’ is a problem-specific knowledge which was
touched by a handful of researchers but still underutilized. Inspired by the problem-specific knowledge, this
paper designs a local search strategy by improving a scatter search strategy, and then proposes a grey prediction
evolution algorithm with the improved scatter search strategy for ATCG-PC. Here, the improved scatter search
strategy could obtain two feasible test cases by exploiting a dimension of a test case covering a certain path.
The proposed algorithm is constructed by importing the improved scatter search strategy to the end of the
reproduction operation of the grey prediction evolution algorithm holding strong exploration ability. Grey
prediction evolution algorithm is first applied to solve ATCG-PC. The performance of the proposed algorithm is
evaluated on six fog computing benchmark programs and six natural language processing benchmark programs.
The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve the highest path coverage with
the fewer test cases and running time than some state-of-the-art algorithms.

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of computer technology, software test-
ing aiming at finding software errors becomes increasingly important
in software industry. The ever-increasing software size is leading to an
increasing complexity of software testing. As a result, automated soft-
ware testing (AST) (Anand et al., 2013; Xing et al., 2015) has received
a growing attention. The main task of AST is to automatically generate
test cases which can meet a certain coverage criterion, i.e., condi-
tion coverage, sentence coverage, branch coverage, or path coverage
criterion. In particular, automated test case generation for path cov-
erage (ATCG-PC) becomes the hottest topic in the AST community
when researchers realize that the condition coverage, sentence cover-
age, and branch coverage can be transformed into the path coverage
criterion (Clarke, 1976; Sun et al., 2019; Gong et al., 2020).
ATCG-PC is aimed to generate a test case set which can obtain the
highest path coverage of a tested program. This is a difficult problem
with a highly non-linear structure. The technologies to solve ATCG-PC
mainly include three categories, i.e., random testing, symbolic execu-
tion, and search-based testing (Anand et al., 2013; Zamli et al., 2016;
Nosrati et al., 2020). The random testing generates test cases by random
sampling in the entire input domain of a tested program. It is easy
to implement and runs fast, but generally has low path coverage. The
symbolic execution, in which symbolic values are used as input data of
a tested program rather than actual data, generates test cases by solving
related constraints. It can check the behavior of a tested program
along specific paths, but is less effective in handling arrays, procedure
calls, pointer references, and infinite loops. The search-based testing
converts ATCG-PC into an optimization problem and then generates
test cases according to the solution of the optimization problem via
search-based algorithms. For search-based algorithms do not depend
on gradient information and can automatically retrieve the solution in
a certain search space, the search-based testing has become a develop-
ment trend of solving ATCG-PC. Many search-based algorithms, i.e., hill
climbing (HC) (Khari et al., 2020), tabu search (TS) (Bhattacharjee and
Pati, 2014), alternating variable method (AVM) (Korel, 1990), genetic
algorithm (GA) (Yao and Gong, 2014), particle swarm optimization
(PSO) (Sahoo and Ray, 2020), artificial bee colony (ABC) (Mala et al.,
2010), differential evolution (DE) (Huang et al., 2017), ant colony op-
timization (ACO) (Srivastava et al., 2009), negative selection algorithm
(NSA) (Mohi-Aldeen et al., 2016) or their improved versions, have
obtained competitive simulation results for ATCG-PC.
As we all know, application-oriented algorithms should be designed
to take advantage of problem-specific knowledge as much as possible
to guide algorithmic search. The search-based algorithms which have
been applied to solving ATCG-PC adopt two kinds of approaches to
gain searching power from the specific knowledge of ATCG-PC. One

∗ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: caigcs@126.com (G. Cai), suqhdd@126.com (Q. Su), huzbdd@126.com (Z. Hu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2021.104454
Received 26 February 2021; Received in revised form 28 August 2021; Accepted 28 August 2021
Available online xxxx
0952-1976/© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
approach is to obtain hidden knowledge of ATCG-PC by a certain mean
of data mining. The other is to directly apply a certain prior knowledge
of ATCG-PC. A prior knowledge which has been noticed by a handful
of researchers is: similar paths are usually executed by similar test cases.
And considering that a test case is actually a higher-dimensional vector
composed of all input variable values of a tested program. So it can
be inferred that there is a certain relevance between the dimensions
of test cases covering similar paths. We define the prior knowledge as
‘‘dimensional relevance of test cases’’ (DRTC). A detailed review of the
two kinds of approaches can be found in the related work subsection
of the next section.
Inspired by DRTC, we found that the test case of an uncovered path
may only be different from the test cases of its similar paths in some
dimensions. It can be imagined if we could use this principle to design a
local search strategy for assisting a search-based algorithm with strong
global search ability, then a competitive performance for ATCG-PC can
be expected. Following this way, this paper proposes a grey prediction
evolution algorithm with improved scatter search strategy (GPE-IS).
Here, the grey prediction evolution algorithm (GPE) is a competitive
search-based algorithm with strong global search ability and improved
scatter search (IS) strategy is a local search strategy designed according
to DRTC rule.
Unlike the classical scatter search (SS) strategy, IS strategy obtains
two feasible test cases by exploiting a dimension of a test case covering
a certain path. In fact, from the related work of the next section, we
can know it is the first time that DRTC rule is applied to design a local
search strategy for assisting a search-based algorithm. The search-based
algorithm GPE is first applied to solve ATCG-PC.
In sum, this paper mainly completes the following works.
• The prior knowledge of ‘‘similar paths are usually executed by
similar test cases’’ is analyzed in depth and defined .
• A local search strategy (IS strategy) inspired by the prior knowl-
edge is designed.
• GPE-IS is proposed to solve ATCG-PC.
• The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated on
six fog computing benchmark programs and six natural language
processing (NLP) benchmark programs.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
introduces a preliminary including a related work about search-based
algorithms with problem-specific knowledge, several basic concepts of
ATCG-PC and a fitness function. Original GPE, proposed IS strategy
and GPE-IS are introduced in Section 3. The application of GPE-IS
in ATCG-PC is described in Section 4. In Section 5, three groups
numerical experiments are conducted on six fog computing and six NLP
benchmark programs to investigate the performance of GPE-IS. Finally,
a conclusion section is given.
2. Preliminary
The application of specific knowledge can develop the performance
of search-based algorithms for ATCG-PC. The specific knowledge used
in the search-based algorithms concludes the hidden knowledge of
ATCG-PC obtained by certain data mining methods and a prior knowl-
edge of ATCG-PC. In this section, the related work of search-based
algorithms with specific knowledge for ATCG-PC is first introduced.
Then, some basic concepts of ATCG-PC and the fitness function used
in this paper are described.
2.1. Related work
Some search-based algorithms have been widely used in ATCG-PC,
due to their generality. In general, they can usually obtain desirable
performance when specific knowledge of ATCG-PC is utilized. As far
as we know, only a few researchers utilize the specific knowledge of
ATCG-PC to assist search-based algorithms. There are the following
2
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454
two categories of the search-based algorithms which obtain their search
power from the specific knowledge of ATCG-PC.
The first category of algorithms improve their search power from
the hidden knowledge of ATCG-PC obtained by certain data mining
methods. Huang et al. (2018) proposed an improved DE with a rela-
tionship matrix (RP-DE), in which the relationship matrix between the
dimensions of test case and covered paths can guide DE to perform
more searches on the dimensions relevant to the target path. Dai
et al. (2021) proposed a DE with node branch archive (NBAr-DE), in
which a three-dimensional matrix is used to record the relationship
between the values of test case variables and node branches according
to the information of the path covered by generated test cases, and the
values covering node branches recorded in the relationship matrix are
assigned to the corresponding dimensions of the current test case.
The second category of algorithms improve their search power by
directly using the prior knowledge of ATCG-PC (i.e., DRTC). Bueno and
Jino (2002) proposed an improved GA with path-test-cases database,
which stores generated test cases and paths covered by them. Test cases
covering the similar paths of a uncovered path are selected from the
database to establish the initial population of GA, then GA is used
to generate test case covering the uncovered path. Cao et al. (2009)
introduced an improved GA with overlapped path similarity-based
multi-path fitness function (OPS_M), which can guide GA to generate
test cases for multiple paths in one run by making use of discovered test
cases covering some paths. Not long ago, Gong et al. (2020) proposed
an improved multi-population GA with target paths grouping method
based on path similarity, in which all target paths are divided into
multiple groups and any pair of paths in the same group are highly
similar. When test cases covering some paths are generated in a group,
these test cases are used by the multi-population GA to quickly generate
their similar test cases covering other paths in the same group.
As can be seen from the above, the first category of algorithms
may take a certain computational cost to obtain sufficient hidden
knowledge of ATCG-PC by certain data mining methods. In addition,
the data mining methods will also increase the complexity of these
algorithms. Therefore, this paper focuses on developing the second
category of algorithms. Obviously, DRCT has not been utilized to design
a local search strategy for improving the search power of search-based
algorithms. If a local search strategy that takes full advantage of DRTC
is designed to assist a search-based algorithm with strong global search
ability, it is likely to generate an effective technique with strong local
and global search abilities. In this paper, DRTC is utilized to design a
local search strategy for assisting a search-based algorithm with strong
global search ability. This is the first time that DRTC has been applied
to design a local search strategy to assist a search-based algorithm.
2.2. Related concepts of ATCG-PC
This subsection introduces four basic concepts of ATCG-PC, in-
cluding control flow graph (CFG), test case, path, as well as path
coverage (Korel, 1990; Saadatjoo and Babamir, 2019).
Definition 1 (CFG). CFG 𝐺 = (𝑁, 𝐸, 𝑠, 𝑒), which can be used to visualize
the structure of a tested program simply, is a directed graph, where 𝑁 is
a set of nodes with an entry node (𝑠) and an exit node (𝑒), 𝐸 represents
a set of edges. Each node 𝑛𝑓 ∈ 𝑁 corresponds to a programming
statement in a program, an edge (𝑛𝑓 , 𝑛𝑔 ) ∈ 𝐸 is a control transformation
from 𝑛𝑓 to 𝑛𝑔 . Each out-coming edge of a conditional or decision node
is known as a branch, which can be marked with a predicate that
describes the conditions under which the branch will be traversed.
Definition 2 (Test Case). A test case usually denotes a vector in which
each dimension is a feasible value in the corresponding domain of a
tested program.
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
Fig. 1. An example program and its control flow graph.
Definition 3 (Path). In a tested program, a path consists of a sequence
of nodes with an entry node (𝑠) and an exit node (𝑒), such as <
𝑠, 𝑛1 , … , 𝑛𝑔 , 𝑒 >, where each edge composing of nearly two nodes
belongs to 𝐸.
Definition 4 (Path Coverage). As a coverage criterion, path coverage
reflects the proportion of all possible paths covered by generated test
cases.
For illustrating the above definitions, an example program is em-
ployed in Fig. 1. In CFG of Fig. 1, each circle denotes a node, such
as ⃝ 1 and ⃝. 3 ⃝ 1 and ⃝ 3 are two decision nodes. < 1, 2 > and <
1, 3 > represent two edges. This two edges are out-coming edges of the
decision node ⃝, 1 so they are also called branches < 1, 2 > and < 1, 3 >,
and associated with the branch predicates ‘‘𝑋 = 97’’ and ‘‘𝑋 ! = 97’’,
respectively. < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4, 𝑒 >, < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 𝑒 >, < 𝑠, 1, 3, 4, 𝑒 >, and
< 𝑠, 1, 3, 𝑒 > denote all paths in CFG.
2.3. Fitness function
A fitness function is an important part of a search-based algorithm,
because it can effectively guide the algorithm to find the test cases that
can cover uncovered paths via evaluating the quality of each generated
test case in each iteration (Lv et al., 2018). This paper aims at a
single-path coverage problem, in which one path is considered in each
iteration. Therefore, a fitness function considering a path is employed
in this paper.
Branch distance (BD) (Mala et al., 2010; Huang et al., 2017; Liu
et al., 2019; Tracey et al., 1998) and approach level (AL) (Lin and
Yeh, 2001; Sahin and Akay, 2016) are popular heuristics in the design
of the fitness function considering a path. BD reflects the degree of
deviation between a branch predicate actually traversed and a desired
branch predicate, while Al reflects the number of mismatched branch
predicates between a target and the path covered by an input. In this
paper, a widely used BD-based fitness function (Liu et al., 2019; Huang
et al., 2018) is utilized to evaluate the quality of each generated test
case. For an input 𝒙, the BD-based fitness function can be expressed as
follows (Liu et al., 2019).
∑
𝜉
1 is expressed as 𝒙𝑔𝑖 = (𝑥𝑔𝑖,1 , 𝑥𝑔𝑖,2 , … , 𝑥𝑔𝑖,𝑗 , … , 𝑥𝑔𝑖,𝐷 ), 𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑁, and
𝑓 𝑖𝑡𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠𝐵𝐷 (𝒙) = (1)
𝑛=1
𝜀 + 𝐵𝐷(𝒙, 𝑝𝑡𝑛 )
where 𝑝𝑡 denotes a current target path; 𝜉 is the number of branch
predicates of 𝑝𝑡 ; 𝜀 is a smaller constant to avoid a zero denominator;
𝐵𝐷(𝒙, 𝑝𝑡𝑛 ), BD of 𝒙 on the 𝑛th branch predicate of 𝑝𝑡 , can be calculated
by the branch distance functions in Table 1, which are introduced by
Tracey et al. (1998); The second column of Table 1 lists typical branch
predicates, and the third column is their corresponding branch distance
functions.
A simple example is given to illustrate the calculation process of the
fitness function based on Table 1. Let there be two branch predicates in
a target path, i.e. ‘‘𝑥1 == 0’’ and ‘‘𝑥2 >= 10’’, and an input test case be
3
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454
Table 1
The branch functions of branch predicates.
No. Branch predicate Branch distance function
1 Boolean If true then 0 else 𝐾
2 𝑎>𝑏 If 𝑏 − 𝑎 < 0 then 0 else (𝑏 − 𝑎)+𝐾
3 𝑎≥𝑏 If 𝑏 − 𝑎 ≤ 0 then 0 else (𝑏 − 𝑎)+𝐾
4 𝑎<𝑏 If 𝑎 − 𝑏 < 0 then 0 else (𝑎 − 𝑏)+𝐾
5 𝑎≤𝑏 If 𝑎 − 𝑏 ≤ 0 then 0 else (𝑎 − 𝑏)+𝐾
6 𝑎=𝑏 If |𝑎 − 𝑏| = 0 then 0 else |𝑎 − 𝑏| +𝐾
7 𝑎≠𝑏 If |𝑎 − 𝑏| ≠ 0 then 0 else 𝐾
8 𝑎∧𝑏 BD(𝑎) + BD(𝑏)
9 𝑎∨𝑏 Min (BD(𝑎), BD(𝑏))
10 ¬𝑎 Negation is propagated over 𝑎
Note: 𝐾 is a constant greater than 0, and set to 1 in this paper.
𝒙 = (5, 110). The test case 𝒙 only does not satisfy the branch predicate
‘‘𝑥1 == 0’’. According to the branch distance functions of the sixth and
third branch predicates in Table 1, 𝐵𝐷(𝒙, 𝑝𝑡 ) = (|5-0|+1) + 0 = 6. Thus,
we can obtain the fitness function value of 𝒙.
3. Grey prediction evolution algorithm with improved scatter
search strategy
Inspired by DRTC, an improved scatter search (IS) strategy with
strong local search ability is designed to assist the grey prediction evo-
lution algorithm (GPE) with strong global search ability. In this section,
the original GPE is first introduced. Then, an IS strategy inspired by
DRTC, and a grey prediction evolution algorithm with improved scatter
search strategy (GPE-IS) are proposed successively.
3.1. Grey prediction evolution algorithm
GPE proposed by Hu et al. (2020a) in 2020 is a competitive global
optimization algorithm with few parameters and simple coding. Several
GPE variants have exhibited excellent performance and strong global
search ability in solving some problems, such as environmental eco-
nomic dispatch and constrained engineering optimization problems (Xu
et al., 2020; Gao et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2020b; Dai et al., 2020; Zhou
et al., 2021; Hu et al., 2021), but GPE and its variants have not been
employed to solve ATCG-PC. In this paper, GPE integrates with a local
search strategy inspired by DRTC to construct an improved algorithm
with both strong local and global search abilities. In this subsection,
the evolution process of GPE (Hu et al., 2020a) will be introduced,
including an initialization operation, a reproduction operation, and a
selection operation. Unlike other evolutionary algorithms, GPE uses
the reproduction operation to generate trial population instead of
conventional mutation and crossover operations.
3.1.1. Initialization
In GPE, the 𝑖th individual of the population in the 𝑔th generation
𝑔 = 1, 2, … , 𝐺, where 𝐷 represents the dimension of individual, 𝑁
represents the population size, and 𝐺 is the maximum number of
generations. In the initialization process of GPE, it is essential that three
initialization populations are generated in a feasible region. The 𝑗th
dimension of the 𝑖th individual in the first to the third generation of
GPE can be generated by the following equation.
𝑥𝑔𝑖,𝑗 = 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 + 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(0, 1) ⋅ (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ), 𝑔 = 1, 2, 3 (2)
where 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(0, 1) denotes a random number generated via a uniform
distribution with a range of 0 to 1. 𝑢𝑝𝑗 and 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 represent the upper
and lower bounds of the 𝑗th dimension, respectively.
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

3.1.2. Reproduction operator For a given problem, 𝑣𝑘,𝑗 may jump out of the constraint [𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 , 𝑢𝑝𝑗 ].
In the reproduction operation of GPE, a population series composed When this happens, 𝑣𝑘,𝑗 will be re-assigned via the following equation.
of three consecutive generations is regarded as a time series to construct
{
an exponential function for predicting the next generation population. 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 , 𝑢𝑔𝑖,𝑗 ), if 𝑣𝑘,𝑗 < 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗
Let three individuals 𝒙𝑟1 , 𝒙𝑟2 , 𝒙𝑟3 be randomly selected from three con- 𝑣𝑘,𝑗 = (9)
| | 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(𝑢𝑔𝑖,𝑗 , 𝑢𝑝𝑗 ), if 𝑣𝑘,𝑗 > 𝑢𝑝𝑗
secutive populations 𝑋 𝑔−2 , 𝑋 𝑔−1 , 𝑋 𝑔 separately, 𝑑12 = |𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 |,
| |
| | | | Step 2: Updating the individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖
𝑑13 = |𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 |, 𝑑23 = |𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 |, 𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑑𝑟 = 𝑚𝑎𝑥{𝑑12 , 𝑑23 , 𝑑13 },
| | | |
and 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑟 = 𝑚𝑖𝑛{𝑑12 , 𝑑23 , 𝑑13 }. Then the 𝑗th dimension of the 𝑖th In each iteration of IS strategy, the update of the individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 is
𝑔 𝑔 based on a greedy selection mechanism. For the fitness function 𝑓 (𝒙)
individual 𝒖𝑖 of a trial population 𝑈 can be generated by the following
formulation. in Eq. (1), the individual with the maximum fitness function value will
be used to update 𝒖𝑔𝑖 in the comparison of 𝒗1 , 𝒗2 and 𝒖𝑔𝑖 . This process
⎧ (1 − 𝑒𝑎 )(𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 − 𝑏 )𝑒−3𝑎 , if 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑟 ≥ 𝛾
⎪ 𝑎 can be expressed as the following equation since the three individuals
𝑢𝑔𝑖,𝑗 = ⎨ 𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 + 𝑤 ⋅ 𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑑𝑟 , elseif 𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑑𝑟 < 𝛾 (3) differ in only 𝑗th dimension.
⎪ 4𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 +𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 −2𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 . otherwise
⎩ 3 ⎧ 𝑣 , if 𝑓 (𝒗1 ) = Max {𝑓 (𝒗1 ), 𝑓 (𝒗2 ), 𝑓 (𝒖𝑔𝑖 )}
⎪ 1,𝑗
𝑢𝑔𝑖,𝑗 = ⎨ 𝑣2,𝑗 , if 𝑓 (𝒗2 ) = Max {𝑓 (𝒗1 ), 𝑓 (𝒗2 ), 𝑓 (𝒖𝑔𝑖 )} (10)
⎧ 2(𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 −𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 ) ⎪ 𝑢𝑔 ,
⎪ 𝑎 = 𝑥 +𝑥 otherwise
⎩ 𝑖,𝑗
⎪ 𝑟2,𝑗 𝑟3,𝑗
2((𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 )2 +𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 ⋅𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 −𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 ⋅𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 )
⎨ 𝑏= (4) The pseudocode of IS strategy is shown in Algorithm 1. In lines 1–
⎪ 𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 +𝑥𝑟3,𝑗
⎪ 𝑤 = 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(−1, 1) ⋅ 𝛾 10, IS strategy will exploit each dimension of 𝒖𝑔𝑖 in turn. To be specific,
⎩ Line 2 initializes the adaptive search step with 𝑠𝑗 = (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ) ⋅ 0.5.
where 𝛾 is a threshold to control forecast; 𝑤, 𝑎, 𝑏 separately represent a Line 3 is the loop to process 𝑠𝑗 greater than or equal to 1. In lines 4 -
disturbance coefficient, a grey developmental coefficient, a grey control line 6, 𝒗1 and 𝒗2 are generated based on Eqs. (6)–(9). Line 7 updates
parameter. 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑(−1, 1) represents a random number sampled from a the individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 by Eq. (10). In line 8, the value of 𝑠𝑗 will be halved.
uniform distribution with a range of [−1, 1]. Algorithm 1: Improved scatter search strategy
Input: 𝒖𝑔𝑖 ;
3.1.3. Selection operator
Output: A better 𝒖𝑔𝑖 than the previous one ;
Like most evolutionary algorithms, a greedy selection mechanism
1 for 𝑗 = 1 ∶ 𝐷 do
is applied to the selection process of GPE. The most potential individ-
2 Initialize adaptive search step: 𝑠𝑗 = (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ) ⋅ 0.5 ;
uals will be retained in the next generation by comparing the fitness
3 while 𝑠𝑗 ≥ 1 do
function values of the target individual 𝒙𝑔𝑖 and trial individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 . For
4 for 𝑘 = 1 ∶ 2 do
a minimization problem, if 𝒙𝑔𝑖 obtains a better fitness function value
5 Generate 𝒗𝑘 by Eqs. (6)–(9) ;
than 𝒖𝑔𝑖 , 𝒙𝑔𝑖 will be retained for the next generation. Instead, 𝒖𝑔𝑖 will
6 end
be retained for the next generation. The selection operator can be
7 Update the individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 by Eq. (10) ;
expressed by the following equation.
8 𝑠𝑗 = 𝑠𝑗 ⋅ 0.5 ;
{ 𝑔
𝒖𝑖 , if 𝑓 (𝒖𝑔𝑖 ) < 𝑓 (𝒙𝑔𝑖 ) 9 end
𝒙𝑔+1
𝑖 = 𝑔 (5)
𝒙𝑖 , otherwise 10 end

3.2. Improved scatter search strategy
Inspired by DRTC, IS strategy that focuses on each dimension of an
individual is designed. IS strategy can generate feasible similar indi-
viduals by exploiting each dimension of individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 . The calculation
process of IS strategy can be divided into the following two steps.
Step 1: Generating new candidate individuals
For the exploitation of the 𝑗th dimension of individual 𝒖𝑔𝑖 , two
candidate individuals 𝑣1 and 𝑣2 are generated in each iteration accord-
ing to an adaptive search step 𝑠𝑗 , which will iteratively decrease to
a threshold based on the idea of the binary search. 𝑣1 , 𝑣2 and 𝒖𝑔𝑖 are
different in only one dimension. Suppose there be 𝑚 iterations in the
𝑗th dimension exploitation. That is, 𝑠𝑗 is equal to the preset threshold
after 𝑚 iterations. In the 𝑡th iteration of the 𝑗th dimension of individual
𝒖𝑔𝑖 , two candidate individuals are generated by the following equations.
IS strategy, SS strategy and AVM, which all focus on each dimension
of an individual, can enhance the local search ability of search-based
algorithms, but IS strategy has the following advantages. Specifically,
IS strategy exploits the left and right regions of each dimension of
an individual, while AVM always exploits the direction of fitness im-
provement. Thus, IS strategy can reduce the probability of falling into
a local optimum. Being different from SS strategy, values which violate
constraints are reassigned in IS strategy. In addition, IS strategy takes
into account the case that the input value of the current dimension
of an individual is a boundary value. When the input value is the
lower bound and the optimal value is the upper bound, IS strategy can
consume fewer resources to jump to the upper bound.
3.3. Proposed algorithm: grey prediction evolution algorithm with improved
scatter search strategy

Based on the above GPE with strong exploration capability and IS

𝑠𝑗 = (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ) ⋅ 0.5𝑡 , 𝑡 = 1, 2, … , 𝑚 (6) strategy with strong exploitation capability, a grey prediction evolution
algorithm with improved scatter search strategy (GPE-IS) is proposed
in this paper to drive the collaborative cooperation of the exploration
𝒗𝑘 = 𝒖𝑔𝑖 (7) and exploitation.
Like the original GPE, GPE-IS includes an initialization operation,
a reproduction operation, and a selection operation. Different from the
⎧ 𝑢𝑔 + 𝑠𝑗 ⋅ (2 ⋅ 𝑘 − 3), if 𝑢𝑔 ≠ 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 and 𝑢𝑔 ≠ 𝑢𝑝𝑗 original GPE, GPE-IS is proposed by importing IS strategy to the end
⎪ 𝑔𝑖,𝑗 𝑔
𝑖,𝑗 𝑖,𝑗
of the reproduction operation of GPE. This strategy will further exploit
𝑣𝑘,𝑗 = ⎨ 𝑢𝑖,𝑗 − 𝑘 ⋅ 𝑠𝑗 , if 𝑢𝑖,𝑗 = 𝑢𝑝𝑗 (8)
⎪ 𝑢𝑔 + 𝑘 ⋅ 𝑠 , if 𝑢𝑔 = 𝑙𝑜𝑤 each trial individual generated by the reproduction operation.
⎩ 𝑖,𝑗 𝑗 𝑖,𝑗 𝑗
The pseudocode of GPE-IS is shown in Algorithm 2 (Java Codes can
where 𝑘 = 1, 2; be found in https://github.com/Zhongbo-Hu/Prediction-Evolutionary-

4
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
Algorithm-HOMEPAGE). Line 1 initializes three populations 𝑋 3 , 𝑋 2 ,
𝑋 1 by Eq. (2). Lines 3–11 complete one iteration of GPE-IS. More
specifically, line 4–8 perform the reproduction operator of GPE. Lines
9 performs IS strategy. In line 10, the selection operator of GPE is
performed by Eq. (5).
Algorithm 2: The procedure of GPE-IS
Input: 𝑁, 𝐷, 𝑙𝑜𝑤, 𝑢𝑝.
Output: Test cases.
1 Three populations 𝑋 3 , 𝑋 2 , 𝑋 1 are initialized by Eq. (2);
2 while termination conditions are not satisfied do
3 for 𝑖 = 1 ∶ 𝑁 do
4 Three individuals 𝒙𝑟1 , 𝒙𝑟2 , 𝒙𝑟3 are randomly selected from
𝑋 𝑔−2 , 𝑋 𝑔−1 , 𝑋 𝑔 (𝑔 ≥ 3), separately ;
5 for 𝑗 = 1 ∶ 𝐷 do
| | | |
6 𝑑12 = |𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 |, 𝑑13 = |𝑥𝑟1,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 |,
| | | |
| |
𝑑23 = |𝑥𝑟2,𝑗 − 𝑥𝑟3,𝑗 |, 𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑑𝑟 = 𝑚𝑎𝑥{𝑑12 , 𝑑23 , 𝑑13 }, and
| |
𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑟 = 𝑚𝑖𝑛{𝑑12 , 𝑑23 , 𝑑13 } ;
7 Reproduction operator is performed by Eqs. (3) and
(4);
8 end
9 Algorithm 1 is performed;
10 Selection operator is performed by Eq. (5) ;
11 end
12 end
4. Application of GPE-IS in ATCG-PC
This paper mainly studies the application of GPE-IS for the single-
path coverage problem in ATCG-PC. In this problem, uncovered paths
are covered one by one via multiple iterations. Thus, the sorting of
target paths generally affects the performance of GPE-IS. In this section,
a dynamic target path sorting method based on approach level (AL) is
first presented to assist GPE-IS for making full use of DRTC as much as
possible. Then, the overall process and an example of solving ATCG-PC
based on GPE-IS, and a discussion on the effectiveness of GPE-IS for
ATCG-PC are described.
4.1. Dynamic target path sorting method based on approach level
′
Let uncovered path set be 𝑃 𝑢 = {𝑝𝑢1 , 𝑝𝑢2 , … , 𝑝𝑢𝜐 }, 𝑝𝑡 and 𝑝𝑡 re-
spectively denote the current target path and the next target path.
According to DRTC, when 𝑝𝑡 is covered, an uncovered path that is
′
more similar to 𝑝𝑡 is preferred as 𝑝𝑡 . AL, which reflects the number
of mismatched branch predicates between two paths, is employed to
measure the similarity of two paths. The smaller the AL value is, the
more similar the two paths are. Then the next target path is determined
by the following equation.
′
𝑝𝑡 = arg min {𝐴𝐿(𝑝𝑢𝜅 , 𝑝𝑡 ) | 𝜅 = 1, 2, … , 𝜐}
𝑢 𝑝𝜅
(11)
Note: If the current target path is not covered after all dimensions of
𝒖𝑔𝑖 have been exploited by IS strategy, the current target path is likely
to be infeasible or GPE-IS may be trapped in a local optimum. When
this phenomenon occurs, a path will be randomly selected from the set
of remaining uncovered paths to replace the current target path.
4.2. The overall process of solving ATCG-PC based on GPE-IS
Fig. 2 shows the overall view of GPE-IS being applied to ATCG-PC,
and it can be described in the following six steps.
Step 1 In the ‘‘Static Analysis’’ part, the target path set, input
variables and their corresponding input types and domain are extracted
from a tested program. Meanwhile, the input variables and their cor-
responding input types and domain are input to GPE-IS. The search
space of GPE-IS is the input domain of the tested program, and each
5
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454
individual generated by GPE-IS represents a test case. Let the tested
program have 𝑑 input variables, and 𝐷𝑗 represents the domain of the
𝑗th input variable, then the search space of GPE-IS is 𝐷1 × 𝐷2 × ⋯ × 𝐷𝑑 .
Step 2 GPE-IS is executed to generate a test case set. Then this test
case set are input into the tested program.
Step 3 The tested program with these test cases is run.
Step 4 The running result is recorded, and the path coverage
information is updated. If the current target path is covered, then the
next target path is selected according to Eq. (11).
Step 5 The most potential test cases are selected to the next gen-
eration by comparing the fitness function values of generated test
cases.
Step 6 A termination condition is checked. If 100% path coverage
or a maximum acceptable number of test case is reached, the operation
to solve ATCG-PC is terminated. Otherwise, return to Step2.
4.3. An example of employing GPE-IS to solve ATCG-PC
This subsection gives an example to illustrate the process of using
the proposed algorithm to generate test cases covering target paths. The
instance shown in Fig. 1 serves as an illustration program. In Fig. 1,
< 𝑠, 1, 3, 𝑒 >, < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 𝑒 >, < 𝑠, 1, 3, 4, 𝑒 >, and < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4,
𝑒 > are the paths of the program, 𝑋 and 𝑌 are inputs with an integer
and a two-character string respectively. Each character corresponds to
an integer ASCII code in the range [0, 255]. For example, the ASCII
values 97, 98 and 99 represent the characters 𝑎, 𝑏 and 𝑐, respectively.
To calculate the fitness value of each input according to Table 1, the
strings are encoded as real numbers based on the ASCII code. So the
input range of each character variable is set to [0, 255]. For simplicity,
the input range of 𝑋 is also set to [0, 255]. The test cases of the program
can be expressed in (𝑋, 𝑌1 , 𝑌2 ), where 𝑌1 and 𝑌2 represent the first
and second characters of 𝑌 respectively. Suppose that the test cases
generated by the initialization and reproduction operations of GPE-IS
in the first iteration can only cover the path < 𝑠, 1, 3, 𝑒 >. Immediately,
IS strategy exploits each dimension of each test case generated by the
reproduction operation.
IS strategy first exploits the first test case generated by the repro-
duction operation. Let the first test case be (40, 65, 71), which covers
the path < 𝑠, 1, 3, 𝑒 >. According to Eq. (11), the path < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3,
𝑒 > is first selected as the current target path. When the path < 𝑠, 1, 2,
3, 𝑒 > is covered, the path < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4, 𝑒 > will be selected as the
next target path. To simplify but not lose generality, this subsection
only shows the process of generating test cases for these two paths.
The process is shown in Fig. 3, in which b represents a random number
generated by Eq. (9). The light red, light green, and light blue boxes in
Fig. 3 represent the exploitation of the IS strategy in the first, second,
and third dimensions, respectively. In each box, 𝑠𝑗 value on the top
right represents the 𝑠𝑗 value in this iteration, the test cases from left to
right are candidate test case 𝑣1 , test case 𝑢𝑖 , and candidate test case 𝑣2 ,
and the test case marked in red is the best one of the three test cases.
For example, in the first box in the light red column, the test cases (b,
65, 71) and (167, 65, 71) are candidate test cases 𝑣1 and 𝑣2 generated
by the IS strategy in the first iteration of the first dimension according
to the test case 𝑢𝑖 (40, 65, 71) and 𝑠1 127, and the test cases (40, 65,
71) is the best one of the three test cases. In the exploitation of the
1th dimension, the adaptive search step 𝑠1 is initialized to 127 (line 2
of Algorithm 1). And then, two candidate test cases, 𝒗1 = (b, 65, 71)
and 𝒗2 = (167, 65, 71), are generated (lines 4–6 of Algorithm 1). 𝒖𝑖 is
updated to (40, 65, 71) by comparing the fitness values of 𝒖𝑖 , 𝒗1 , and
𝒗2 (line 7 of Algorithm 1). The adaptive search step 𝑠1 is updated to
63 (line 8 of Algorithm 1). For the following iterations, 𝑠1 is updated
to 31, 25, 7, 3, and 1 successively. The best test case generated in the
exploitation of the 1th dimension is (97, 65, 71).
Subsequently, the 2th dimension are exploited (lines 2–9 of Algo-
rithm 1). In the exploitation of the 2th dimension, 𝑠2 is updated to 63,
31, 25, 7, 3, and 1 successively (line 8 of Algorithm 1). The test case
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
Fig. 2. The overall process of solving ATCG-PC based on GPE-IS.
(97, 98, 71) covering the target path < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 𝑒 > is generated
in the 7th iteration of the 2th dimension. The current target path is
replaced with the path < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4, 𝑒 >, and the 3th dimension are
exploited (lines 2–9 of Algorithm 1) to find the test case covering this
target path. In the 6th iteration of the 3th dimension, the test case (97,
98, 99) covering target path < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4, 𝑒 > is generated.
The target paths < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 𝑒 > and < 𝑠, 1, 2, 3, 4, 𝑒 > are covered
by the 28th and 39th test cases respectively. This result indicates that
the contribution of DRTC is considerable.
5. Simulation experiments
In this section, a series of experiments are conducted on six fog
computing benchmark programs and six NLP benchmark programs to
verify the performance of GPE-IS. Initially, the parameter sensitivity
analysis of GPE-IS is presented to determine the value of the parameter
𝛾 of GPE-IS, and the parameter settings of other compared algorithms
are described in the same subsection. Secondly, the effectiveness of IS
strategy is verified by comparing the performance of GPE-IS, GPE and
GPE-SS. Finally, to verify the superiority of GPE-IS, GPE-IS is compared
with some basic algorithms (DE, PSO, ABC, and crow search algo-
rithm (CSA) (Jatana and Suri, 2020), some state-of-the-art algorithms
tested on the fog computing benchmark programs (RP-DE, RP-IGA,
RP-ABC and RP-PSO) (Huang et al., 2018), and some state-of-the-art
algorithms tested on the NLP benchmark programs (DE-SS, PSO-SS,
ABC-SS, IGA-SS and CSO-SS) (Liu et al., 2019). After analyzing the three
experimental results, a comprehensive analysis of the experimental re-
sults is presented. All experiments are executed on a personal computer
with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4210M CPU @ 2.60 GHz and 8 GB RAM.
The codes of the algorithms are implemented in Java 8. The benchmark
programs and evaluation indicators for evaluating the performance of
each algorithm are introduced at the beginning of this section.
5.1. Benchmark programs and evaluation indicators
In all experiments, the following twelve benchmark programs and
three well-known evaluation indicators are employed.
5.1.1. Benchmark programs
iFogSim (Gupta et al., 2017) and Stanford CoreNLP toolkit (Man-
ning et al., 2014) are hot applications in current society. iFogSim
is a modeling and simulation toolkit for resource management tech-
nologies in edge computing, internet of things and fog computing
environments. Stanford CoreNLP toolkit is an extensible pipeline which
can provide core natural language analysis. In this paper, the six fog
computing benchmark programs from iFogSim (‘transmit’, ‘send’, ‘pro-
cessEvent’, ‘executeTuple’, ‘checkCloudletCompletion’, and ‘getResul-
tantTuple’) (Gupta et al., 2017) and six NLP benchmark programs from
6
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454
Stanford CoreNLP toolkit (‘initFactory’, ‘cleanXmlAnnotator’, ‘word-
sToSentenceAnnotator’, ‘annotate’, ‘nerClassifierCombiner’, and ‘set-
TrueCaseText’) (Manning et al., 2014), have been used by Huang
et al. (2018), Liu et al. (2019) and Dai et al. (2021), are employed
for experimental studies. These programs are equipped with nested
structures (such as nested IF statements, etc.), relational operators ( =
, ! = , <, >, ≤, ≥) and logical operators (AND, OR). They also contain
data types such as strings, integers, and so on. Tables 2 and 3 exhibit
the basic information and complexity of each benchmark program,
respectively. The programs No.1 to No.6 are fog computing programs
and the programs No.7 to No.12 are NLP programs. In Table 2, the
columns ‘Program’, ‘Loc’, ‘Dim’, ‘Path’ and ‘Description’ mean the name,
number of lines, dimensions, number of paths and brief description
of each program, respectively. In Table 3, the column ‘Probability of
covering the most difficult path’ means the probability that the path
with the smallest possible solutions is covered by a randomly generated
test case, and the column ‘Search space size’ means the number of
possible solutions. From the column ‘Probability of covering the most
difficult path’ of Table 3, it can be seen that the probability of the
program No.2 is 0, and the program No.1 and programs No.4 to No.12
have the lower probabilities than the program No.3. The reason is
that the program No.2 has some impossible paths, and the program
No.1 and programs No.4 to No.12 hold some paths which can only be
covered by specific strings. As can be seen from the column ‘Search
space size’ in Table 3, the search space size of the program No.1 is
the smallest (1.68E+07), while that of the program No.7 is the largest
(6.04E+23).
5.1.2. Evaluation indicators
Three evaluation indicators, including the average number of test
cases (Ave.m), average path coverage (Ave.c), and average running
time (Ave.t), have been widely employed by other scholars to evaluate
the performance of the algorithms in their researches (Mohi-Aldeen
et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2019; Huang et al., 2018; Dai et al., 2021).
In this paper, these evaluation indicators are adopted to measure the
performance of all the algorithms.
1. Ave.m, i.e. the average number of test cases generated by an
algorithm over 30 independent runs. A T-test with the significant
level of 0.05 is adopted to determine the significance between
the ave.m of two algorithms in this paper.
2. Ave.c, i.e. the average path coverage of an algorithm over 30
independent runs.
3. Ave.t, i.e. the average running time (ms) of an algorithm re-
quired for 30 independent runs.
For the above evaluation indicators, fewer Ave.m, higher Ave.c, and
shorter Ave.t values are desirable.
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

Table 2
The basic information of benchmark programs.
Program type No. Program Loc Dim Path Description
1 transmit 30 3 2 transfer data from one sensor to another
2 send 47 2 9 send packaged tuple from one fog-device or sensor to another fog device
3 processEvent 67 7 9 process events of fog-device
Fog computing programs
4 executeTuple 41 7 5 update device power consumption by using tuple processing logic
5 checkCloudletCompletion 43 5 6 be called on fog-device when tuple execution is complete
6 getResultantTuple 73 8 7 processed tuple is returned to application
7 initFactory 86 7 48 return the correct type of token according to options for properties file and typeclass
8 cleanXmlAnnotator 21 6 3 a new object of cleanXmlAnnotator is create
9 wordsToSentenceAnnotator 108 11 12 a text of natural language is converted to an annotator type
NLP programs
10 annotate 30 4 3 convert a comment into a sentence
11 nerClassifierCombiner 30 11 4 create a new object of nerClassifiercombiner class
12 setTrueCaseText 37 6 10 set the attribute of class trueCaseText

Table 3
The complexity of the benchmark programs.
Program type No. Probability of covering the most difficult path Search space size
1 5.96E−08 1.68E+07
2 0 4.00E+12
3 1.25E−06 6.00E+19
Fog computing programs
4 5.33E−15 8.44E+14
5 4.47E−08 6.71E+07
6 1.78E−15 1.69E+15
7 1.65E−24 6.04E+23
8 3.55E−15 1.84E+19
9 2.33E−10 1.89E+22
Natural language processing programs
10 8.33E−17 3.60E+16
11 3.55E−15 1.44E+17
12 9.07E−13 2.20E+12

Fig. 3. An example of employing GPE-IS to generate test cases for path coverage. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the
web version of this article.)

5.2. Parameters of the algorithms
Generally speaking, the parameter values of algorithms will affect
the optimization effect. GPE is equipped with a vital parameter 𝛾, which
controls the probability in which each prediction formula in Eq. (3)
is used. A smaller 𝛾 value leads to a greater diversity of test cases
generated by GPE-IS. The setting method of the parameter 𝛾 in this
paper is problem-oriented, because there are differences between the
domain intervals of different problems. 𝛾 value depends on the length
of the domain interval (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ). To analyze the influence of the
parameters 𝛾 on GPE-IS, a sensitivity analysis of the parameters 𝛾 is
performed. The effect analysis of different 𝛾 values in {0.005𝐿, 0.01𝐿,
0.02𝐿, 0.04𝐿 and 0.08𝐿, where 𝐿 = 𝑢𝑝𝑗 −𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 } on GPE-IS is conducted
based on the twelve benchmark programs. Table 4 lists Ave.c and
Ave.m values obtained by five GPE-IS with different 𝛾 values, in which
GPE-IS-0.005𝐿, GPE-IS-0.01𝐿, GPE-IS-0.02𝐿, GPE-IS-0.04𝐿 and GPE-
IS-0.08𝐿 represent GPE-IS with 𝛾 = 0.005𝐿, 0.01𝐿, 0.02𝐿, 0.04𝐿 and
0.08𝐿 respectively. The Ave.c and Ave.m values obtained by the five
GPE-IS with different 𝛾 values on different benchmark programs are
listed in columns ‘Ave.c’ and ‘Ave.m’ of Table 4 separately. The best
results on each benchmark program are highlighted in bold. As can

7
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
Fig. 4. The number of paths covered by generated test cases on different number of the generated test cases.
be seen from Table 4 that the Ave.c values obtained by the five GPE-
IS with different 𝛾 values are all 66.7% for the program No.2 and
100% for the remaining eleven programs, while GPE-IS-0.005𝐿 obtains
the smallest Ave.m values for seven benchmark programs, i.e., the
programs No.1, No.2, No.5, No.6, No.8, No.11, and No.12. To sum
up the above analysis, GPE-IS-0.005𝐿 is better than GPE-IS-0.01𝐿,
GPE-IS-0.02𝐿, GPE-IS-0.04𝐿 and GPE-IS-0.08𝐿. Therefore, in the final
two comparison experiments, the 𝛾 value of GPE-IS is set to 0.005 ⋅
(𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ).
The parameter settings of other compared algorithms are shown in
Table 5. These parameters are the same as the Liu et al. (2019), Huang
et al. (2018), Jatana and Suri (2020) and Huang et al. (2017).
8
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454
5.3. Verification of the proposed IS strategy
To verify the effectiveness of IS strategy proposed in this paper, the
performance of GPE-IS, GPE and GPE-SS is tested based on the above-
mentioned benchmark programs, parameter settings and evaluation
indicators. Therein, GPE-SS and GPE-IS are separately the combination
of GPE with SS strategy and IS strategy inspired by DRTC. If GPE-IS
outperforms GPE and GPE-SS, IS strategy is an effective technology that
takes full advantage of DRTC. The experimental results obtained by
these algorithms in terms of Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t are tabulated in
Table 6. The best results on each benchmark program are highlighted
in bold. Columns ‘Ave.c’, ‘Ave.m’ and ‘Ave.t’ respectively show the
Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t values obtained by each algorithm on different
benchmark programs. Additionally, the results of the hypothesis test
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

Table 4
Sensitivity analysis for parameter 𝛾 of GPE-IS.
Program GPE-IS-0.005𝐿 GPE-IS-0.01𝐿 GPE-IS-0.02𝐿 GPE-IS-0.04𝐿 GPE-IS-0.08𝐿
Ave.c Ave.m Ave.c Ave.m Ave.c Ave.m Ave.c Ave.m Ave.c Ave.m
No.1 100% 1.88E+02 100% 1.88E+02 100% 1.89E+02 100% 1.89E+02 100% 1.89E+02
No.2 66.7% 3.00E+05 66.7% 3.00E+05 66.7% 3.00E+05 66.7% 3.00E+05 66.7% 3.00E+05
No.3 100% 3.91E+02 100% 3.63E+02 100% 3.48E+02 100% 4.77E+02 100% 4.70E+02
No.4 100% 3.57E+02 100% 3.53E+02 100% 3.54E+02 100% 3.45E+02 100% 3.62E+02
No.5 100% 1.95E+02 100% 1.95E+02 100% 1.95E+02 100% 1.95E+02 100% 1.95E+02
No.6 100% 3.34E+02 100% 3.43E+02 100% 3.47E+02 100% 3.63E+02 100% 3.50E+02
No.7 100% 1.05E+04 100% 1.01E+04 100% 1.13E+04 100% 1.15E+04 100% 9.31E+03
No.8 100% 2.59E+02 100% 2.84E+02 100% 2.67E+02 100% 2.78E+02 100% 2.60E+02
No.9 100% 9.01E+02 100% 8.89E+02 100% 8.72E+02 100% 8.57E+02 100% 8.65E+02
No.10 100% 2.74E+02 100% 2.90E+02 100% 2.61E+02 100% 2.72E+02 100% 3.02E+02
No.11 100% 2.49E+02 100% 2.49E+02 100% 2.49E+02 100% 2.49E+02 100% 2.49E+02
No.12 100% 5.06E+02 100% 5.12E+02 100% 5.09E+02 100% 5.14E+02 100% 5.24E+02

Table 5
Experimental parameter setting.
Algorithm Parameter Value
Maximum acceptable number of test case 𝑀 3.00E+05
All algorithm Run times for each algorithm 30
Population size 50
GEP, GEP-SS, GPE-IS 𝛾 0.005*(𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 )
𝑐1 , 𝑐2 1.6, 1.7
PSO
Weight value 𝑤 0.8
Limit 10 ⋅ 𝐷
ABC
Bee number 50
𝐴𝑃 0.05
CSA
𝐹𝑙 2
Factor Parameter 𝐹 0.5
DE, RP-DE, DE-SS
Crossover probability 𝑃𝑐 0.2
𝑐1 , 𝑐2 1.5, 2
RP-PSO, PSO-SS
Weight value 𝑤 0.4
Limit 2
RP-ABC, ABC-SS
Bee number 50
Crossover probability 0.8
RP-IGA, IGA-SS
Mutation probability 0.1
CSO-SS 𝑃 ℎ𝑖 0.8

for GPE-IS and each compared algorithm are presented in the brack-
ets, where ‘+’ (‘−’) indicates that GPE-IS performs significantly better
(worse) than the other algorithm in Ave.m, and ‘=’ indicates there is no
significant difference between the Ave.m values of two algorithms. The
last row of the table shows the number of ‘+’, ‘=’ and ‘−’. Taking the
sixth column of Table 6 as an example, ‘1.09E+04 (+)’ indicates that
the Ave.m obtained by GPE is 1.09E+04, and the Ave.m obtained by
GPE-IS is significantly better than that obtained by GPE for the program
No.1. ‘11/1/0’ indicates that the Ave.m values obtained by GPE-IS are
significantly better than those obtained by GPE for eleven benchmark
programs, and the Ave.m value obtained by GPE-IS is no significant
difference with that obtained by GPE for one benchmark program.
In terms of Ave.c metric, as can be seen from Table 6, GPE-IS and
GPE-SS obtain the highest Ave.c values for all benchmark programs
(The highest Ave.c value of the program No.2 is 66.7% and those
of the remaining eleven programs are 100%.), while GPE obtains the
highest Ave.c values for six out of twelve benchmark programs, i.e., the
programs No.1, No.3, No.5, No.6, No.8, and No.11. This shows that IS
strategy can enhance GPE to obtain higher Ave.c.
In terms of Ave.m metric, the results of the hypothesis test (+/=/−)
show that GPE-IS significantly outperforms GPE and GPE-SS for eleven
and ten out of twelve benchmark programs respectively, and performs
worse than GPE-SS only for the benchmark program No.7. For program
No.2, the Ave.m values obtained by all algorithms are the maximum
acceptable number of test cases 𝑀. The reason is that the program No.2
contains three impossible paths, so it is impossible for all algorithms to
obtain 100% path coverage, and all algorithms are terminated when
the number of test cases obtained by them is 𝑀.
Fig. 4 visualizes the number of paths covered by test cases generated
via each algorithm, in which the abscissa and the ordinate represent
the number of generated test cases and the number of covered paths,
respectively. For instance, ⧫, ▴ and ◦ in the upper of Fig. 4(a) indicate
that the 188th test case generated by GPE-IS, the 10900th test case
generated by GPE, and the 260th test case generated by GPE-SS cover
the second path of the program No.1. As can be seen from Fig. 4, GPE-IS
can obtain 100% path coverage with the least number of test cases for
all programs except programs No.2 and No.7. When these algorithms
cover all six possible paths of No.2, the Ave.m obtained by GPE-IS is the
smallest. Two reasons cause GPE-IS having the best performance. First
of all, IS strategy makes full use of the specific knowledge of ATCG-
PC to find undiscovered paths. In addition, the consideration for the
redistribution of the violated constraint value and the case that the
input value is the boundary value in IS strategy improves the efficiency
of searching desire test cases.
With respect to Ave.t, GPE-IS outperforms GPE-SS and GPE for all
benchmark programs except the program No.2. For the program No.2,
the Ave.t of GPE-IS (6.06E+01) is slightly longer than that of GPE-SS
(4.80E+01), but shorter than that of GPE (1.36E+02). The reason is
that the time complexity of IS strategy is slightly greater than that of
SS strategy and smaller than that of GPE for generating a test case.
According to the above observations, GPE-IS outperforms GPE and
GPE-SS in terms of Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t. So IS strategy is effective.

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G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

Table 6
Comparison of GPE-IS, GPE and GPE-SS.
Program GPE-IS GPE GPE-SS
Ave.c Ave.m Ave.t Ave.c Ave.m Ave.t Ave.c Ave.m Ave.t
No.1 100% 1.88E+02 1.20E+00 100% 1.09E+04 (+) 1.62E+01 100% 2.60E+02 (+) 5.20E+00
No.2 66.7% 3.00E+05 6.06E+01 51.7% 3.00E+05 (=) 1.36E+02 66.7% 3.00E+05 (=) 4.80E+01
No.3 100% 3.91E+02 3.10E+00 100% 8.06E+02 (+) 1.42E+01 100% 7.91E+03 (+) 3.07E+01
No.4 100% 3.57E+02 2.57E+00 94.0% 1.24E+05 (+) 1.85E+02 100% 4.82E+02 (+) 6.27E+00
No.5 100% 1.95E+02 2.20E+00 100% 2.39E+04 (+) 4.27E+01 100% 2.74E+02 (+) 8.33E+00
No.6 100% 3.34E+02 4.27E+00 100% 1.83E+05 (+) 2.23E+02 100% 5.20E+02 (+) 7.77E+00
No.7 100% 1.05E+04 2.38E+01 10.3% 3.00E+05 (+) 4.69E+02 100% 7.52E+03 (−) 2.97E+01
No.8 100% 2.59E+02 2.17E+00 100% 7.06E+04 (+) 9.49E+01 100% 3.26E+02 (+) 4.67E+00
No.9 100% 9.01E+02 1.59E+01 81.2% 3.00E+05 (+) 6.92E+02 100% 1.84E+03 (+) 2.29E+01
No.10 100% 2.74E+02 1.57E+00 66.0% 3.00E+05 (+) 1.80E+02 100% 5.29E+02 (+) 7.80E+00
No.11 100% 2.49E+02 2.50E+00 100% 8.57E+04 (+) 1.27E+02 100% 3.61E+02 (+) 5.20E+00
No.12 100% 5.06E+02 5.73E+00 49.0% 3.00E+05 (+) 2.99E+02 100% 7.91E+02 (+) 1.10E+01
Sumup + /=/− 11/1/0 10/1/1

Table 7
Comparison of statistical results in Ave.c.
Program GPE-IS DE PSO ABC CSA RP-DE RP-PSO RP-ABC RP-IGA DE-SS PSO-SS ABC-SS IGA-SS CSO-SS
No.1 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 58.3% 56.7% 100% – – – – –
No.2 66.7% 43.3% 45.1% 46.2% 43.3% 66.7% 66.7% 66.7% 66.7% – – – – –
No.3 100% 79.2% 84.1% 80.0% 78.8% 100% 100% 100% 100% – – – – –
No.4 100% 100% 85.3% 100% 98.0% 100% 42.7% 44.0% 58.7% – – – – –
No.5 100% 100% 100% 94.3% 92.6% 100% 76.2% 75.6% 96.7% – – – – –
No.6 100% 100% 71.9% 72.0% 71.0% 97.5% 15.9% 16.8% 43.9% – – – – –
No.7 100% 6.4% 4.3% 8.0% 6.9% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
No.8 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
No.9 100% 100% 63.8% 73.4% 60.1% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
No.10 100% 100% 66.0% 100% 100% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
No.11 100% 100% 89.2% 91.7% 86.7% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
No.12 100% 100% 32.3% 43.7% 32.0% – – – – 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Note. ‘‘-’’ means that the publishing algorithm has not been tested on the corresponding benchmark programs.

5.4. Comparison of GPE-IS and some other algorithms
The above experiments illustrate the effectiveness of IS strategy for
GPE. In this subsection, to further demonstrate the superiority of GPE-
IS, the performance of GPE-IS is compared with those of four basic
algorithms and nine published state-of-the-art algorithms, i.e., DE, PSO,
ABC, CSA, RP-DE, RP-IGA, RP-ABC, RP-PSO, DE-SS, IGA-SS, ABC-SS,
PSO-SS and CSO-SS. The Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t values obtained by all
algorithms are recorded in Tables 7–9 separately. The best results of
these algorithms are highlighted in bold. The results of the hypothesis
test, ‘+’, ‘=’ and ‘−’, are recorded in the brackets and are summarized
in the last row of Table 8.
With respect to Ave.c from Table 7, it can be clearly seen that GPE-
IS obtains the highest Ave.c values for all benchmark program, DE-SS,
IGA-SS, ABC-SS, PSO-SS and CSO-SS obtain the highest Ave.c values
for the programs No.1 to No.6, while DE, PSO, ABC, CSA, RP-DE, RP-
IGA, RP-ABC and RP-PSO fail to obtain the highest Ave.c values for
some benchmark programs. For example, DE, PSO, ABC, and CSA fail to
obtain the highest Ave.c values for the programs No.2, No.3, and so on.
RP-DE, RP-IGA, RP-ABC and RP-PSO cannot obtain the highest Ave.c
values for the program No.5 and so on. The reason is that DE, PSO,
ABC, and CSA does not have the assistance of the prior knowledge,
and RP-DE, RP-IGA, RP-ABC and RP-PSO may not obtain sufficient
hidden knowledge of ATCG-PC on some programs during the optimized
process, these factors lead to their failure to obtain the highest Ave.c on
some benchmark programs. While the prior knowledge of ATCG-PC can
assist GPE-IS to obtain the highest Ave.c for all benchmark programs.
While with respect to Ave.m from Table 8, as shown in the results
of hypothesis test (+/=/−), the Ave.m values obtained by GPE-IS are
significantly better than those of all the other compared algorithms for
all benchmark programs except the programs No.2, No.7, and No.8.
This is because GPE-IS can use a discovered test case covering a path
to quickly find undiscovered test cases covering its similar paths, so
that GPE-IS can obtain the highest path coverage with fewer test cases.
The Ave.m value obtained by GPE-IS is significantly worse than those of
DE-SS, PSO-SS, ABC-SS, IGA-SS and CSO-SS for the program No.7, and
significantly worse than those of IGA-SS and CSO-SS for the program
No.8. For programs with multiple similar paths like the program No.7,
GPE-IS is more likely to fall into a local optimum, because GPE-IS’s the
dynamic target path sorting method based on AL has not randomness,
while the target path sorting method equipped by DE-SS, IGA-SS,
ABC-SS, PSO-SS and CSO-SS has certain randomness.
In terms of Ave.t metric from Table 9, GPE-IS outperforms all the
other compared algorithms for all benchmark programs except the
programs No.2, and No.7 to No.9. For programs No.7 and No.8, the
Ave.t values obtained by GPE-IS are longer than those obtained by DE-
SS, IGA-SS, ABC-SS, PSO-SS and CSO-SS. The reason is that the numbers
of iterations obtained by GPE-IS are greater than or equal to those
obtained by these five compared algorithms for the programs No.7 and
No.8, and the time complexity of GPE-IS is greater than those of these
five compared algorithms.
The above analysis shows that GPE-IS obtains the highest path
coverage with the fewest test cases and running time than all the other
algorithms. Therefore, the performance of GPE-IS is superior to the
other algorithms.
5.5. Comprehensive analysis of experimental results
Based on the above experimental results and the design mechanism
of GPE-IS, this subsection conducts an in-depth analysis on the pa-
rameter sensitivity of GPE-IS, the effectiveness of IS strategy and the
competitiveness of GPE-IS. The conclusions are as follows.
• About the parameter 𝛾 of GPE-IS. The smaller 𝛾 value, the greater
the probability in which the first formula in Eq. (3) will be used,
and the greater the diversity of test cases generated by GPE. In
this paper, the five different 𝛾 values, i.e., 𝛾 = 0.005𝐿, 0.01𝐿,
0.02𝐿, 0.04𝐿 and 0.08𝐿, are explored for their impact on the
performance of GPE-IS, where 𝐿 = (𝑢𝑝𝑗 −𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ). It can be seen from

10
 G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
Table 8
Comparison of statistical results in Ave.m.
Program GPE-IS DE PSO ABC CSA RP-DE RP-PSO RP-ABC RP-IGA DE-SS PSO-SS ABC-SS IGA-SS CSO-SS
No.1 1.88E+02 2.27E+03 (+) 5.79E+02 (+) 8.29E+02 (+) 1.61E+03 (+) 4.25E+03 (+) 2.73E+05 (+) 2.84E+05 (+) 3.91E+04 (+) – – – – –
No.2 3.00E+05 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (=) – – – – –
No.3 3.91E+02 2.99E+05 (=) 2.85E+05 (+) 2.94E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 7.01E+03 (+) 5.80E+03 (+) 2.45E+03 (+) 1.34E+04 (+) – – – – –
No.4 3.57E+02 1.05E+04 (=) 1.15E+05 (+) 2.88E+03 (+) 6.32E+04 (+) 9.21E+04 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 2.63E+05 (+) – – – – –
No.5 1.95E+02 3.89E+03 (=) 1.24E+03 (+) 1.01E+05 (+) 1.32E+05 (+) 9.80E+03 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 2.95E+05 (+) 9.23E+04 (+) – – – – –
No.6 3.34E+02 2.62E+04 (=) 3.00E+05 (+) 2.94E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 1.61E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 2.81E+05 (+) – – – – –
11

No.7 1.05E+04 3.00E+05 (=) 3.00E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) – – – – 7.38E+03 (−) 8.59E+03 (−) 7.79E+03 (−) 7.89E+03 (−) 7.96E+03 (−)
No.8 2.59E+02 8.91E+03 (=) 1.63E+03 (+) 2.07E+03 (+) 6.49E+03 (+) – – – – 2.31E+02 (=) 2.30E+02 (=) 2.85E+02 (=) 2.04E+02 (−) 2.05E+02 (−)
No.9 9.01E+02 1.46E+04 (=) 3.00E+05 (+) 1.53E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) – – – – 2.29E+03 (+) 3.32E+03 (+) 2.42E+03 (+) 1.94E+04 (+) 2.58E+03 (+)
No.10 2.74E+02 3.44E+04 (=) 3.00E+05 (+) 8.74E+03 (+) 1.67E+04 (+) – – – – 4.13E+02 (+) 4.78E+02 (+) 4.72E+02 (+) 6.99E+02 (=) 4.08E+02 (+)
No.11 2.49E+02 1.13E+04 (=) 1.31E+05 (+) 1.03E+05 (+) 1.71E+05 (+) – – – – 6.36E+02 (+) 7.61E+02 (+) 8.76E+02 (+) 2.22E+03 (+) 5.68E+02 (+)
No.12 5.06E+02 3.09E+04 (=) 3.00E+05 (+) 2.94E+05 (+) 3.00E+05 (+) – – – – 1.51E+03 (+) 1.96E+03 (+) 1.89E+03 (+) 1.10E+04 (+) 1.50E+03 (+)
Sumup + /=/− 11/1/0 11/1/0 11/1/0 11/1/0 5/1/0 5/1/0 5/1/0 5/1/0 5/0/1 5/0/1 5/0/1 4/0/2 4/0/2

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

Note. ‘‘-’’ indicates that the publishing algorithm has not been tested on the corresponding benchmark programs.
G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence 106 (2021) 104454

Table 9
Comparison of statistical results in Ave.t.
Program GPE-IS DE PSO ABC CSA RP-DE RP-PSO RP-ABC RP-IGA DE-SS PSO-SS ABC-SS IGA-SS CSO-SS
No.1 1.20E+00 7.40E+00 3.40E+00 8.67E+00 8.23E+00 3.23E+00 9.16E+01 6.79E+01 1.43E+01 – – – – –
No.2 6.06E+01 6.97E+01 6.97E+01 1.82E+02 6.22E+01 5.65E+01 5.63E+01 6.59E+01 7.48E+01 – – – – –
No.3 3.10E+00 1.33E+02 1.73E+02 1.80E+02 1.17E+02 5.90E+00 4.27E+00 3.13E+00 7.43E+00 – – – – –
No.4 2.57E+00 2.49E+01 1.02E+02 2.01E+01 6.14E+01 5.38E+01 1.49E+02 1.80E+02 1.29E+02 – – – – –
No.5 2.20E+00 1.42E+01 1.20E+01 9.47E+01 7.84E+01 1.40E+01 1.10E+02 1.16E+02 4.90E+01 – – – – –
No.6 4.27E+00 3.82E+01 2.50E+02 2.92E+02 2.16E+02 9.94E+01 1.24E+02 1.52E+02 1.43E+02 – – – – –
No.7 2.38E+01 2.09E+02 2.53E+02 2.76E+02 2.01E+02 – – – – 1.77E+01 1.78E+01 1.75E+01 1.75E+01 1.76E+01
No.8 2.17E+00 1.92E+01 1.52E+01 2.10E+01 1.95E+01 – – – – 1.83E+00 2.17E+00 2.00E+00 2.07E+00 1.73E+00
No.9 1.59E+01 2.74E+01 3.32E+02 1.52E+02 2.47E+02 – – – – 1.34E+01 1.37E+01 1.44E+01 2.75E+01 1.45E+01
No.10 1.57E+00 2.74E+01 1.60E+02 2.39E+01 2.38E+01 – – – – 3.23E+00 3.67E+00 2.83E+00 4.83E+00 2.67E+00
No.11 2.50E+00 2.37E+01 9.99E+01 1.11E+02 1.19E+02 – – – – 4.50E+00 7.40E+00 6.03E+00 1.15E+01 5.97E+00
No.12 5.73E+00 3.48E+01 1.86E+02 2.50E+02 1.85E+02 – – – – 1.15E+01 1.23E+01 1.12E+01 1.90E+01 1.08E+01

Note. ‘‘-’’ means that the publishing algorithm has not been tested on the corresponding benchmark programs.

Table 4 that the performance of the five GPE-IS with different
𝛾 values is the same in terms of Ave.c. In terms of Ave.m, the
Ave.m values obtained by the five GPE-IS with different 𝛾 values
have very little difference, even the same in many programs, such
as the program No.1, No.2. No.5, No.11 and so on. The Ave.m
obtained by GPE-IS with 𝛾 = 0.005 ⋅ (𝑢𝑝𝑗 − 𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑗 ) is slightly better
than the Ave.m values obtained by GPE-IS with the other four
𝛾 values. This shows that GPE-IS expects GPE to generate more
diverse test cases to cover a variety of different paths, because IS
strategy has strong local search capability.
• About the effectiveness of IS strategy. The effectiveness of IS strategy
is verified by comparing the performance of GPE-IS, GPE-SS and
GPE. As can be seen from Table 6, the performance of GPE-IS is
better than that of GPE in terms of Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t, and
GPE-SS in terms of Ave.m and Ave.t. This shows that IS strategy
is an effective technology that takes full advantage of DRTC, and
more competitive than SS strategy for ATCG-PC.
• About the competitiveness of GPE-IS. As can be seen from Tables 7–
9, the overall performance of GPE-IS is better than DE, PSO, ABC,
and CSA and RP-DE, RP-IGA, RP-ABC and RP-PSO in terms of
Ave.c, Ave.m and Ave.t, and better than DE-SS, PSO-SS, ABC-SS,
IGA-SS and CSO-SS in terms of Ave.m and Ave.t. This shows that
GPE-IS, which makes full use of the prior knowledge of ATCG-PC,
is competitive. The performance of the basic algorithms (DE, PSO,
ABC, and CSA) which do not make use of the specific knowledge
of ATCG-PC is mediocre, while the search-based algorithms with
relation matrix (RP-DE, RP-IGA, RP-ABC and RP-PSO) may fail
to retrieve sufficient hidden knowledge of ATCG-PC in the op-
timization process for assisting it to obtain better performance.
Although GPE-IS is competitive, it has a drawback. For the pro-
gram No.7 with multiple similar paths, GPE-IS may fall into a
local optimum, due to its adoption of a dynamic target path
sorting method which has no randomness.
6. Conclusions
Inspired by the prior knowledge of ATCG-PC, i.e., the dimension
correlation of test cases (DRTC), this paper first designed an improved
scatter search (IS) strategy holding strong local search ability and
then proposed a grey prediction evolution algorithm with improved
scatter search strategy (GPE-IS). In the proposed algorithm, IS strategy
explores each dimension of the discovered test case covering a definite
path to quickly generate undiscovered test cases for uncovered paths,
while GPE maintains the diversity of test cases to cover a variety of
different paths. In addition, a dynamic target path sorting method
based on AL is proposed to assist GPE-IS to utilize DRTC as much as
possible. This is the first time that GPE is applied to solve ATCG-PC, and
GPE-IS can effectively find undiscovered test cases covering multiple
uncovered paths by exploring a discovered test case in theory.
The performance of GPE-IS was verified on the six fog computing
benchmark programs and six NLP benchmark programs. The experi-
mental results are summarized as follows. (1) IS strategy is an effective
technology that takes full advantage of the prior knowledge DRTC.
(2) In GPE-IS, GPE is expected to generate more diverse test cases.
(3) GPE-IS can obtain the highest path coverage with the fewest test
cases and running time in all compared algorithms. Therefore, GPE-IS
is competitive for solving ATCG-PC.
The proposed algorithm is competitive, yet has some defects. The
dynamic target path sorting method based on AL in GPE-IS has no
randomness. For programs with multiple similar paths, like program
No.7, GPE-IS may fall into a local optimum. In addition, GPE-IS focuses
on the single-path coverage problem that considers one target path in
one iteration, so GPE-IS is limited in solving the multi-path coverage
problem that considers multiple target paths in one iteration. In the
future scope of the work, the research directions are as follows. (1)
a target path sorting method with randomness will be studied. (2) IS
strategy will be combined with other search-based algorithms, such as
multi-objective scatter search approach (e Silva et al., 2013), to solve
the multi-path coverage problem.
The proposed algorithm can be considered as a case of using
problem-specific knowledge to enhance the performance of GPE for
solving ATCG-PC. DRTC and other problem-specific knowledge can also
be used to enhance the performance of other search-based algorithms,
such as arithmetic optimization algorithm (Abualigah et al., 2021b),
sine cosine algorithm (Abualigah and Diabat, 2021), etc. In addition,
it is hoped that GPE-IS or the design idea of GPE-IS will provide a
new perspective for solving other problems, such as mutation testing,
traveling salesman problem, etc.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Gaocheng Cai: Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft,
Software. Qinghua Su: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing,
Visualization. Zhongbo Hu: Data curation, Writing - review & editing,
Investigation.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the State Key Laboratory of Bio-
geology and Environmental Geology (China University of Geosciences,
No. GBL21801), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No.
61972136).

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G. Cai, Q. Su and Z. Hu
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