mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

An Execution-Verified Multi-Language Benchmark for Code Semantic Reasoning

arXiv 2605.11006 ↗First posted 10 May 2026cs.SE cs.AIcited by 1

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

Abstract (arXiv)

Evaluating whether large language models (LLMs) can recover execution-relevant program structure, rather than only produce code that passes tests, remains an open problem. Existing code benchmarks emphasize test-passing outputs, from standalone programming tasks (HumanEval, MBPP, LiveCodeBench) to repository repair (SWE-Bench); this is useful, but offers limited diagnostic signal about which program semantics a model can recover from source. We introduce TraceEval, to our knowledge the first execution-verified, multi-language benchmark for code semantic reasoning: recovering a program's runtime call structure from source code. Unlike prior call-graph benchmarks that rely on static-tool output or hand-annotated ground truth, every positive edge in TraceEval is mechanically witnessed by validation execution, eliminating annotator disagreement and label noise for observed behavior. TraceEval consists of (i) 10,583 real-world programs (2,129 test, 8,454 train) extracted from 1,600+ open-source repositories across Python, JavaScript, and Java via an LLM-assisted harness-generation pipeline with tracer validation; and (ii) a reproducible pipeline that converts any open-source repository into new verified benchmark instances. We evaluate 10 LLMs at zero-shot on the held-out test split. The strongest model, Claude-Opus-4.6, reaches an average F1 of 72.9% across the three languages. To demonstrate the train split's utility as a supervision substrate, we fine-tune the Qwen2.5-Coder family on it: lifts of up to +55.6 F1 bring tuned Qwen2.5-Coder-32B to 71.2%, within 1.7 F1 of zero-shot Claude-Opus-4.6. We release the benchmark, pipeline, baselines, and a datasheet at https://github.com/yikun-li/TraceEva

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 25 of its 38 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 May 2026.

Builds on

25 of 38 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024CodeMMLU: A Multi-Task Benchmark for Assessing Code Understanding & Reasoning Capabilities of CodeLLMs2 Oct
  2. 2024Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Report18 Sep
  3. 2024Reasoning Runtime Behavior of a Program with LLM: How Far Are We?25 Mar
  4. 2024LiveCodeBench: Holistic and Contamination Free Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code12 Mar

Other references · 21

  1. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  2. 2021Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Codecited by 8,053
  3. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,146
  4. 2021Program Synthesis with Large Language Modelscited by 3,509
  5. 2023SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?cited by 3,193
  6. 2023Is Your Code Generated by ChatGPT Really Correct? Rigorous Evaluation of Large Language Models for Code Generationcited by 1,332
  7. 2024Tulu 3: Pushing Frontiers in Open Language Model Post-Trainingcited by 988
  8. 2021Measuring Coding Challenge Competence With APPScited by 879
  9. 2025DeepSeek-V3.2: Pushing the Frontier of Open Large Language Modelscited by 755
  10. 2023Distilling Step-by-Step! Outperforming Larger Language Models with Less Training Data and Smaller Model Sizescited by 710
  11. 2024BigCodeBench: Benchmarking Code Generation with Diverse Function Calls and Complex Instructionscited by 527
  12. 2025Absolute Zero: Reinforced Self-play Reasoning with Zero Datacited by 323
9 more
  1. 2022Large Language Models Are Reasoning Teacherscited by 318
  2. 2024CRUXEval: A Benchmark for Code Reasoning, Understanding and Executioncited by 294
  3. 2022Teaching Small Language Models to Reasoncited by 279
  4. 2025SWE-Bench Pro: Can AI Agents Solve Long-Horizon Software Engineering Tasks?cited by 254
  5. 2024V-STaR: Training Verifiers for Self-Taught Reasonerscited by 214
  6. 2024SWT-Bench: Testing and Validating Real-World Bug-Fixes with Code Agentscited by 129
  7. 2024LLMDFA: Analyzing Dataflow in Code with Large Language Modelscited by 22
  8. 2021PyCG: Practical Call Graph Generation in Pythoncited by 16
  9. 2024An Empirical Study of Large Language Models for Type and Call Graph Analysis in Python and JavaScriptcited by 3

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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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  1. 2026CoRE: A Fine-Grained Code Reasoning Benchmark Beyond Output Prediction
  2. 2025CoRe: Benchmarking LLMs Code Reasoning Capabilities through Static Analysis Tasks
  3. 2025Demystifying Errors in LLM Reasoning Traces: An Empirical Study of Code Execution Simulation
  4. 2025EquiBench: Benchmarking Large Language Models' Reasoning about Program Semantics via Equivalence Checking
  5. 2025Do Code Semantics Help? A Comprehensive Study on Execution Trace-Based Information for Code Large Language Models
  6. 2025A Tool for In-depth Analysis of Code Execution Reasoning of Large Language Models
  7. 2025Evaluating Program Semantics Reasoning with Type Inference in System F
  8. 2026Inferring Code Correctness from Specification