Fault Localization (in short, FL) is a technique to automatically infer which lines of source code are the root cause of a given bug. Spectrum-based FL is a technique that utilizes results and execution paths of test cases. The basic idea of spectrum-based FL is that, program elements executed by failed test cases are more suspicious while program elements executed by passed test cases are less suspicious. Existing spetrum-based FL techniques look for suspicious code by executing test cases, so

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... that program elements outside the source code are out of scope of the FL targets. However, software systems often include other program elements than the source code such as configuration files and databases. In this research, we try to make an extension of spectrum-based FL techniques regarding property files, which are simple yet often used configuration files in software systems. We also implemented a prototype tool based on the extended FL technique. We conducted an experiment on both industrial systems and open source software systems. As a result, we confirmed that: in the case that a bug is in a property file, our technique outperforms the existing technique; in the case that a bug is in a Java source file, there is little to distinguish our technique from the existing technique.