What term describes the ability of a program to resist crashing due to incorrect input or intermediate results?

What term describes the ability of a program to resist crashing due to incorrect input or intermediate results?

• A. Robustness
• B. Reliability
• C. Stability
• D. Fault tolerance

Answer: (A)

Robustness is about a program handling unexpected or invalid inputs and intermediate states without crashing. It covers practices like input validation, proper error handling, and safe defaults so the software stays functional even when things don’t go as planned. Reliability describes how consistently a program works over time, but not specifically how it deals with bad input. Stability refers to keeping behavior steady under varying conditions, not necessarily to preventing crashes from incorrect data. Fault tolerance means the system can continue operating in the presence of faults, often with redundancy, but it emphasizes continuing service after failures rather than preventing a crash from bad input. In this scenario, robustness is the best fit because it directly captures resisting crashes due to incorrect input or intermediate results.

Robustness is about a program handling unexpected or invalid inputs and intermediate states without crashing. It covers practices like input validation, proper error handling, and safe defaults so the software stays functional even when things don’t go as planned. Reliability describes how consistently a program works over time, but not specifically how it deals with bad input. Stability refers to keeping behavior steady under varying conditions, not necessarily to preventing crashes from incorrect data. Fault tolerance means the system can continue operating in the presence of faults, often with redundancy, but it emphasizes continuing service after failures rather than preventing a crash from bad input. In this scenario, robustness is the best fit because it directly captures resisting crashes due to incorrect input or intermediate results.