What programming languages can support mutation testing?

Question

Is it harder (or impossible) to implement mutation testing in some languages than others? For example, is it possible to implement mutation testing in functional programming languages?

Answer 1

I don't see any reason why it would be impossible in any language.

I'm certainly no expert, but I would think that mutation testing would be easier in functional languages. Mutations can be done by redefining operators in functional languages as easily as functions are defined in other languages.

Answer 2

There seems to be some recent research from Oregon State on a mutation testing framework for Haskell called MuCheck: http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~alipour/pub/mucheck.pdf http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~alipour/pub/fp_mutation.pdf

The code is available at https://bitbucket.org/osu-testing/mucheck.git

Answer 3

There is no specific language support in .NET. However there are frameworks that use features of .NET to acheive mutation testing. One such framework, its early days of development is

NinjaTurtles

I know the guys working on this, so consider this a shameless plug, but the team includes some very active and accomplished stack overflow contributors. They are all unashamed geeks and c#/.net experts, so you should have confidence in the quality of the project.

As I mentioned, it is in the very first few weeks of development, and it is well worth watching. If you have a feature request, now is the time to mention it.