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PaperHigh credibilityPLDI 2011 (ACM) · Xuejun Yang, Yang Chen, Eric Eide, John Regehr · June 4, 2011

Finding and Understanding Bugs in C Compilers

Our summary

The landmark differential-testing study: by feeding randomly generated programs to multiple C compilers and comparing outputs, the authors found hundreds of bugs with no oracle beyond 'the compilers should agree'.

Why it matters

The template for differential testing — disagreement between independent systems on the same input is itself a defect signal, directly applicable across LLMs.

Cited by these methods

Published June 26, 2026

Cite this

Qlarify Labs. (2026). Finding and Understanding Bugs in C Compilers. Retrieved from https://labs.qlarify.fi/references/csmith-differential-testing-2011