Software bug

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A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect or unexpected result). Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth.

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[edit] Effects

Bugs can have a wide variety of effects, with varying levels of inconvenience to the user of the program. Some bugs have only a subtle effect on the program's functionality, and may thus lie undetected for a long time. More serious bugs may cause the program to crash or freeze leading to a denial of service. Others qualify as security bugs and might for example enable a malicious user to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges.

The results of bugs may be extremely serious. Bugs in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine were directly responsible for some patient deaths in the 1980s. In 1996, the European Space Agency's US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 rocket was destroyed less than a minute after launch, due to a bug in the on-board guidance computer program. In June 1994, a Royal Air Force Chinook crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, killing 29. This was initially dismissed as pilot error, but an investigation by Computer Weekly uncovered sufficient evidence to convince a House of Lords inquiry that it may have been caused by a software bug in the aircraft's engine control computer. ^[1]

In 2002, a study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce' National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product.^[2]

[edit] Etymology

The concept that software might contain errors dates back to 1842 in Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine in which she speaks of the difficulty of preparing program 'cards' for Charles Babbage's Analytical engine:

Usage of the term "bug" to describe inexplicable defects has been a part of engineering jargon for many decades and predates computers and computer software; it may have originally been used in hardware engineering to describe mechanical malfunctions. For instance, Thomas Edison wrote the following words in a letter to an associate in 1878:

Problems with radar electronics during World War II were referred to as bugs (or glitches), and there is additional evidence that the usage dates back much earlier.

Photo of what is possibly the first real bug found in a computer.

The invention of the term is often erroneously attributed to Grace Hopper, who publicized the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer.^[4] A typical version of the story is given by this quote:

Hopper was not actually the one who found the insect, as she readily acknowledged. And the date was September 9, but in 1947, not 1945.^[6][7] The operators who did find it (including William "Bill" Burke, later of the Naval Weapons Laboratory, Dahlgren Va.),^[8] were familiar with the engineering term and, amused, kept the insect with the notation "First actual case of bug being found." Hopper loved to recount the story.^[9]

While it is certain that the Mark II operators did not coin the term "bug", it has been suggested that they did coin the related term, "debug". Even this is unlikely, since the Oxford English Dictionary entry for "debug" contains a use of "debugging" in the context of airplane engines in 1945 (see the debugging article for more).

[edit] Prevention

Bugs are a consequence of the nature of human factors in the programming task. They arise from oversights or mutual misunderstandings made by a software team during specification, design, coding, data entry and documentation. For example: In creating a relatively simple program to sort a list of words into alphabetical order, one's design might fail to consider what should happen when a word contains a hyphen. Perhaps, when converting the abstract design into the chosen programming language, one might inadvertently create an off-by-one error and fail to sort the last word in the list. Finally, when typing the resulting program into the computer, one might accidentally type a '<' where a '>' was intended, perhaps resulting in the words being sorted into reverse alphabetical order. More complex bugs can arise from unintended interactions between different parts of a computer program. This frequently occurs because computer programs can be complex — millions of lines long in some cases — often having been programmed by many people over a great length of time, so that programmers are unable to mentally track every possible way in which parts can interact. Another category of bug called a race condition comes about either when a process is running in more than one thread or two or more processes run simultaneously, and the exact order of execution of the critical sequences of code have not been properly synchronized.

The software industry has put much effort into finding methods for preventing programmers from inadvertently introducing bugs while writing software.^[10][11] These include:

Programming style

While typos in the program code most likely are caught by the compiler, a bug usually appears when the programmer makes a logic error. Various innovations in programming style and defensive programming are designed to make these bugs less likely, or easier to spot.

Programming techniques

Bugs often create inconsistencies in the internal data of a running program. Programs can be written to check the consistency of their own internal data while running. If an inconsistency is encountered, the program can immediately halt, so that the bug can be located and fixed. Alternatively, the program can simply inform the user, attempt to correct the inconsistency, and continue running.

Development methodologies

There are several schemes for managing programmer activity, so that fewer bugs are produced. Many of these fall under the discipline of software engineering (which addresses software design issues as well). For example, formal program specifications are used to state the exact behavior of programs, so that design bugs can be eliminated. Unfortunately, formal specifications are impractical or impossible for anything but the shortest programs, because of problems of combinatorial explosion and indeterminacy.

Programming language support

Programming languages often include features which help programmers prevent bugs, such as static type systems, restricted name spaces and modular programming, among others. For example, when a programmer writes (pseudocode) LET REAL_VALUE PI = "THREE AND A BIT", although this may be syntactically correct, the code fails a type check. Depending on the language and implementation, this may be caught by the compiler or at runtime. In addition, many recently-invented languages have deliberately excluded features which can easily lead to bugs, at the expense of making code slower than it need be: the general principle being that, because of Moore's law, computers get faster and software engineers get slower; it is almost always better to write simpler, slower code than "clever", inscrutable code, especially considering that maintenance cost is considerable. For example, the Java programming language does not support pointer arithmetic; implementations of some languages such as Pascal and scripting languages often have runtime bounds checking of arrays, at least in a debugging build.

Code analysis

Tools for code analysis help developers by inspecting the program text beyond the compiler's capabilities to spot potential problems. Although in general the problem of finding all programming errors given a specification is not solvable (see halting problem), these tools exploit the fact that human programmers tend to make the same kinds of mistake when writing software.

Instrumentation

Tools to monitor the performance of the software as it is running, either specifically to find problems such as bottlenecks or to give assurance as to correct working, may be embedded in the code explicitly (perhaps as simple as a statement saying "PRINT "I AM HERE"), or provided as tools. It is often a surprise to find where most of the time is taken by a piece of code, and this removal of assumptions might cause the code to be rewritten.

[edit] Debugging

The typical bug history (GNU Classpath project data). A new bug submitted by the user is unconfirmed. Once it has been reproduced by a developer, it is a confirmed bug. The confirmed bugs are later fixed. Bugs belonging to other categories (unreproducible, will not be fixed, etc) are usually in the minority

Finding and fixing bugs, or "debugging", has always been a major part of computer programming. Maurice Wilkes, an early computing pioneer, described his realization in the late 1940s that much of the rest of his life would be spent finding mistakes in his own programs. As computer programs grow more complex, bugs become more common and difficult to fix. Often programmers spend more time and effort finding and fixing bugs than writing new code.

Usually, the most difficult part of debugging is finding the bug in the source code. Once it is found, correcting it is usually relatively easy. Programs known as debuggers exist to help programmers locate bugs. However, even with the aid of a debugger, locating bugs is something of an art. It is not uncommon for a bug in one section of a program to cause failures in a completely different section, thus making it especially difficult to track (for example, an error in a graphics rendering routine causing a file I/O routine to fail), in an apparently unrelated part of the system.

Sometimes, a bug is not an isolated flaw, but represents an error of thinking or planning on the part of the programmer. Such logic errors require a section of the program to be overhauled or rewritten. As a part of Code review, stepping through the code modelling the execution process in one's head or on paper can often find these errors without ever needing to reproduce the bug as such, if it can be shown there is some faulty logic in its implementation.

But more typically, the first step in locating a bug is to reproduce it reliably. Once the bug is reproduced, the programmer can use a debugger or some other tool to monitor the execution of the program in the faulty region, and find the point at which the program went astray.

It is not always easy to reproduce bugs. Some are triggered by inputs to the program which may be difficult for the programmer to re-create. One cause of the Therac-25 radiation machine deaths was a bug that occurred only when the machine operator very rapidly entered a treatment plan; it took days of practice to become able to do this, so the bug did not manifest in testing or when the manufacturer attempted to duplicate it. Other bugs may disappear when the program is run with a debugger; these are heisenbugs (humorously named after the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.)

Debugging is still a tedious task requiring considerable effort. Since the 1990s, particularly following the Ariane 5 Flight 501 disaster, there has been a renewed interest in the development of effective automated aids to debugging. For instance, methods of static code analysis by abstract interpretation have already made significant achievements, while still remaining much of a work in progress.

As with any creative act, sometimes a flash of inspiriation will show a solution, but this is rare and, by definition, cannot be relied on.

There are also classes of bugs that have nothing to do with the code itself. If, for example, one relies on faulty documentation or hardware, the code may be written perfectly properly to what the documentation says, but the bug truly lies in the documentation or hardware, not the code. However, it is common to change the code instead of the other parts of the system, as the cost and time to change it is generally less. Embedded systems frequently have workarounds for hardware bugs, since to make a new version of a ROM is much cheaper than remanufacturing the hardware, especially if they are commodity items.

[edit] Bug management

It is common practice for software to be released with known bugs that are considered non-critical, that is, that do not affect most users' main experience with the product. While software products may, by definition, contain any number of unknown bugs, measurements during testing can provide an estimate of the number of likely bugs remaining; this becomes more reliable the longer a product is tested and developed ("if we had 200 bugs last week, we should have 100 this week"). Most big software projects maintain two lists of "known bugs"— those known to the software team, and those to be told to users. This is not dissimulation, but users are not concerned with the internal workings of the product. The second list informs users about bugs that are not fixed in the current release, or not fixed at all, and a workaround may be offered.

There are various reasons for not fixing bugs:

• The developers often don't have time or it is not economical to fix all non-severe bugs.
• The bug could be fixed in a new version or patch that is not yet released.
• The changes to the code required to fix the bug would be large, and would bring with them the chance of introducing other bugs into the system.
• Users may be relying on the undocumented, buggy behavior; it may introduce a wiktionary:breaking change.
• It's "not a bug". A misunderstanding has arisen between expected and provided behavior

Given the above, it is often considered impossible to write completely bug-free software of any real complexity. So bugs are categorized by severity, and low-severity non-critical bugs are tolerated, as they do not affect the proper operation of the system for most users. NASA's SATC managed to reduce the number of errors to fewer than 0.1 per 1000 lines of code (SLOC) but this was not felt to be feasible for any real world projects.

The severity of a bug is not the same as its importance for fixing, and the two should be measured and managed separately. On a Microsoft Windows system a blue screen of death is rather severe, but if it only occurs in extreme circumstances, especially if they are well diagnosed and avoidable, it may be less important to fix than an icon not representing its function well, which though purely aesthetic may confuse thousands of users every single day. This balance, of course, depends on many factors; expert users have different expectations from novices, a niche market is different from a general consumer market, and so on.

A school of thought popularized by Eric S. Raymond as Linus's Law says that popular open-source software has more chance of having few or no bugs than other software, because "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".^[12] This assertion has been disputed, however: computer security specialist Elias Levy wrote that "it is easy to hide vulnerabilities in complex, little understood and undocumented source code," because, "even if people are reviewing the code, that doesn't mean they're qualified to do so."^[13]

Like any other part of engineering management, bug management must be conducted carefully and intelligently because "what gets measured gets done"^[14] and managing purely by bug counts can have unintended consequences. If, for example, developers are rewarded by the number of bugs they fix, they will naturally fix the easiest bugs first— leaving the hardest, and probably most risky or critical, to the last possible moment ("I only have one bug on my list but it says "Make sun rise in West"). If the management ethos is to reward the number of bugs fixed, then some developers may quickly write sloppy code knowing they can fix the bugs later and be rewarded for it, whereas careful, perhaps "slower" developers do not get rewarded for the bugs that were never there.

[edit] Security vulnerabilities

Malicious software may attempt to exploit known vulnerabilities in a system— which may or may not be bugs. Viruses are not bugs in themselves — they are typically programs that are doing precisely what they were designed to do. However, viruses are occasionally referred to as such in the popular press.

[edit] Common types of computer bugs

• Conceptual error (code is syntactically correct, but the programmer or designer intended it to do something else)

[edit] Maths bugs

• Division by zero
• Arithmetic overflow or underflow
• Loss of arithmetic precision due to rounding or numerically unstable algorithms

[edit] Logic bugs

• Infinite loops and infinite recursion

[edit] Syntax bugs

• Use of the wrong operator, such as performing assignment instead of equality test. In simple cases often warned by the compiler; in many languages, deliberately guarded against by language syntax

[edit] Resource bugs

• Null pointer dereference
• Using an uninitialized variable
• Off by one error, counting one too many or too few when looping
• Access violations
• Resource leaks, where a finite system resource such as memory or file handles are exhausted by repeated allocation without release.
• Buffer overflow, in which a program tries to store data past the end of allocated storage. A special case of access violation
• Excessive recursion which though logically valid causes stack overflow

[edit] Co-programming bugs

• Deadlock
• Race condition
• Concurrency errors in Critical sections, Mutual exclusions and other features of concurrent processing. Time-of-check-to-time-of-use (TOCTTOU) is a form of unprotected critical section.

[edit] Teamworking bugs

• Unpropagated updates; e.g. programmer changes "myAdd" but forgets to change "mySubtract", which uses the same algorithm. These errors are mitigated by the Don't Repeat Yourself philosophy.
• Comments out of date or incorrect: many programmers assume the comments accurately describe the code
• Differences between documentation and the actual product

[edit] Bugs in popular culture

• In the 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the corresponding 1968 film), a spaceship's onboard computer, HAL 9000, attempts to kill all its crew members. In the followup 1982 novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, and the accompanying 1984 film, 2010, it is revealed that this action was caused by the computer having been programmed with two conflicting objectives: to fully disclose all its information, and to keep the true purpose of the flight secret from the crew; this conflict caused HAL to become paranoid and eventually homicidal.
• In the 1984 song 99 Red Balloons (though not in the original German version), "bugs in the software" lead to a computer mistaking a group of balloons for a nuclear missile and starting a nuclear war.
• The 2004 novel The Bug, by Ellen Ullman, is about a programmer's attempt to find an elusive bug in a database application.

[edit] See also

• Glitch
• Software regression
• ISO 9126, which classifies a bug as either a defect or a nonconformity
• Workaround
• Bug tracking system
• Bit rot
• Anti-pattern
• Unusual software bugs (schroedinbug, heisenbug, Bohr bug, and mandelbug)

[edit] Notes

1. ^ The Chinook Helicopter Disaster
2. ^ Software bugs cost US economy dear
3. ^ Edison to Puskas, 13 November 1878, Edison papers, Edison National Laboratory, U.S. National Park Service, West Orange, N.J., cited in Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A History of the American Genius for Invention, Penguin Books, 1989, ISBN 0-14-009741-4, on page 75.
4. ^ FCAT NRT Test, Harcourt, 03/18/2008 
5. ^ Danis, Sharron Ann: "Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper"[1]
6. ^ Definition of bug
7. ^ Log Book With Computer Bug
8. ^ IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol 22 Issue 1, 2000
9. ^ First Computer Bug
10. ^ Huizinga, Dorota; Kolawa, Adam (2007). Automated Defect Prevention: Best Practices in Software Management. Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Press. pp. 426. ISBN 0470042125. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470042125.html. 
11. ^ McDonald, Marc; Musson, Robert; Smith, Ross (2007). The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention. Microsoft Press. pp. 480. ISBN 0735622531. http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9198.aspx. 
12. ^ "Release Early, Release Often", Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar
13. ^ "Wide Open Source", Elias Levy, SecurityFocus, April 17, 2000
14. ^ Smith, Mark, What gets measured gets done, Cobalt Group, http://mspresso.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/what-gets-measured-gets-done/, retrieved on 2009-04-08 

[edit] External links

• Collection of Software Bugs (Thomas Huckle, TU München)
• Computer-Related Incidents with Commercial Aircraft (Peter B. Ladkin et al., Universität Bielefeld)
• An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents (Nancy Leveson, University of Washington and Clark S. Turner, University of California at Irvine)
• Fatal Dose: Radiation Deaths linked to AECL Computer Errors (Barbara Wade Rose, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility)
• Software Horror Stories (Nachum Dershowitz)
• Software Does Not Fail (Paul Niquette]
• Picture of the "first computer bug" The error of this term is elaborated above. (Naval Historical Center)
• Page from 1947 log book with "first actual case of bug being found" (moth) (National Museum of American History)
• The First Computer Bug! An email from 1981 about Adm. Hopper's bug
• How to Report Bugs Effectively (Simon G. Tatham)
• Rates of Design Failure
• Bug Tracking Basics: A beginner’s guide to reporting and tracking defects (Mitch Allen)
• History's Worst Software Bugs
• Bug Isolation Project - This project is to track bugs of popular open source software. (Packages for Fedora available)
• BugSpy.net - Crawls the web for the latest bugs in popular server software. It tries to display only open bugs.