---
license: cc-by-4.0
task_categories:
- text-generation
language:
- en
tags:
- code
- reinforcement-learning
- rlvr
- test-cases
- code-generation
- competitive-programming
size_categories:
- 10K<n<100K
---

<div align="center">

<h2><strong>Robust Code RL via Faulty-Code-Driven Test Case Synthesis and Dense Reward Shaping</strong></h2>

[![arXiv](https://img.shields.io/badge/arXiv-2608.24135-b31b1b.svg?logo=arxiv)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.24135)
[![Venue](https://img.shields.io/badge/Venue-Findings%20of%20EMNLP%202026-4c6ef5.svg)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.24135)
[![Dataset License](https://img.shields.io/badge/Dataset%20License-CC--BY--4.0-f1df61.svg)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

</div>

## Dataset Description

RobustTests is a high-quality test case dataset specifically designed for **reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards (RLVR)** in code generation tasks. It addresses the fundamental limitation of insufficient test coverage that often causes **false positives** and **reward hacking** in RL-based code training.

**Important**: To avoid copyright issues, this dataset only provides the test case collections — it does not include the original problem descriptions. Each problem is identified by its `id` and `source`, which can be used to match with the corresponding problems in [Code-Contests-Plus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/ByteDance-Seed/Code-Contests-Plus) or the original competitive programming platforms.

## Key Features

- **High-Coverage Test Cases**: Each problem is equipped with a rich set of test cases covering various edge cases, boundary conditions, and corner cases, significantly reducing false positives in reward computation.
- **Anti-Reward-Hacking**: By providing thorough test coverage, RobustTests mitigates reward hacking — a common failure mode where models learn to pass a small number of visible test cases without producing genuinely correct solutions.
- **RLVR-Ready**: Designed specifically for reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards, the test cases serve as reliable verification oracles for code generation tasks.
- **Compact Encoding**: Test cases are encoded using a multi-layer compression scheme (Base64 → Zlib → Pickle) to keep storage efficient while preserving all data fidelity.

## Dataset Statistics

| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Total problems | 11,636 |
| Number of files | 4 (sharded parquet) |
| License | CC-BY-4.0 |

### Source Distribution

| Source | Count | Percentage |
|--------|-------|------------|
| Codeforces | 7,525 | 64.7% |
| AIZU | 2,028 | 17.4% |
| AtCoder | 1,318 | 11.3% |
| CodeChef | 765 | 6.6% |

## Dataset Structure

### Data Fields

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `source` | `string` | The competitive programming platform the problem originates from (e.g., Codeforces, AIZU, AtCoder, CodeChef) |
| `id` | `string` | Unique identifier for the problem, which can be used to match with the corresponding problem in Code-Contests-Plus |
| `testcase` | `struct` | Test case container with the following sub-fields: |
| `testcase.inputs` | `list<string>` | List of encoded input strings for each test case (Base64 → Zlib → Pickle compressed) |
| `testcase.outputs` | `list<string>` | List of encoded expected output strings for each test case (Base64 → Zlib → Pickle compressed) |

### Data Format

The dataset is stored in Parquet format, sharded across 4 files:
- `part-00000-of-00004.parquet` (2,909 rows)
- `part-00001-of-00004.parquet` (2,909 rows)
- `part-00002-of-00004.parquet` (2,909 rows)
- `part-00003-of-00004.parquet` (2,909 rows)

## How to Use

### Installation

```bash
pip install datasets
```

### Loading the Dataset

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load the complete dataset
dataset = load_dataset("sid6/RobustTests")

# Access a specific problem
problem = dataset['train'][0]
print(f"Source: {problem['source']}")
print(f"ID: {problem['id']}")
print(f"Number of test cases: {len(problem['testcase']['inputs'])}")
```

### Decoding Test Cases

Test cases are stored using a multi-layer compression encoding. Use the following code to decode:

```python
import base64
import zlib
import pickle


def decode_testcase(encoded_testcase):
    """Decode a single encoded test case.

    Decoding chain: Base64 → Zlib → Pickle → UTF-8 string

    Args:
        encoded_testcase: Base64-encoded compressed test case string

    Returns:
        str: Decoded raw input/output text
    """
    # Step 1: Base64 decode - convert the encoded string back to binary data
    decoded = base64.b64decode(encoded_testcase)

    # Step 2: Zlib decompress - restore the compressed binary data
    decompressed = zlib.decompress(decoded)

    # Step 3: Pickle deserialize - reconstruct Python object from binary
    data = pickle.loads(decompressed)

    # Step 4: Decode bytes to UTF-8 string
    if isinstance(data, bytes):
        data = data.decode('utf-8')

    return data


def parse_testcase(testcase):
    """Parse the entire testcase field by decoding all inputs and outputs.

    Args:
        testcase: A dict with 'inputs' and 'outputs' fields,
                  where each element is a Base64-encoded compressed string

    Returns:
        dict: Decoded testcase in the format:
              {'inputs': [str, ...], 'outputs': [str, ...]}
    """
    return {
        'inputs': [decode_testcase(x) for x in testcase['inputs']],
        'outputs': [decode_testcase(x) for x in testcase['outputs']]
    }
```

### Usage Example

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("sid6/RobustTests")
problem = dataset['train'][0]

# Decode all test cases
decoded = parse_testcase(problem['testcase'])

# Inspect test cases
for i, (inp, out) in enumerate(zip(decoded['inputs'], decoded['outputs'])):
    print(f"--- Test Case {i+1} ---")
    print(f"Input:\n{inp}")
    print(f"Expected Output:\n{out}")
```

## Evaluation

### Benchmark Results

When used to train **Qwen3-32B** via **GRPO**, replacing the original test cases with RobustTests leads to consistent improvements across benchmarks:

| Benchmark | Metric | CodeContests+ | RobustTests | Gain |
|-----------|--------|---------------|-------------|------|
| LiveCodeBench (2024.08–2025.01) | Score | 65.41 | 68.39 | +2.98 |
| Codeforces | Score | 35.56 | 38.50 | +2.94 |
| Codeforces | Rating | 83.96 | 85.99 | +2.03 |
| Codeforces | Percentile | 91.45 | 94.67 | +3.22 |

### Dense Reward Function

The dataset is designed to work with a stepwise dense reward function:

```python
def compute_reward(pass_count, total_count):
    """
    Stepwise dense reward based on pass rate.

    Args:
        pass_count: Number of test cases passed
        total_count: Total number of test cases

    Returns:
        float: Reward value
    """
    if pass_count == total_count:
        return 1.1        # All tests passed
    elif pass_count == 0:
        return -0.1       # All tests failed
    else:
        return 0.1 * (pass_count / total_count)  # Partial credit
```

## Intended Uses

- **RLVR Training**: Serve as high-quality verification oracles for reinforcement learning from verifiable rewards in code generation.
- **Code Generation Evaluation**: Provide comprehensive test cases for evaluating code generation models on competitive programming problems.
- **Anti-Reward-Hacking Research**: Enable research into mitigating reward hacking in RL-based code training.

## Limitations

- The dataset only provides test cases — problem descriptions must be obtained from [Code-Contests-Plus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/ByteDance-Seed/Code-Contests-Plus) or the original platforms.
- The dataset covers competitive programming problems, which may not represent the full diversity of real-world software engineering tasks.
- While test coverage is significantly enhanced compared to the original problems, it may still not be exhaustive for all possible edge cases.
- The test cases are designed for programs that read from stdin and write to stdout, following the competitive programming convention.

## Source Data

The test cases in this dataset are designed for problems from [Code-Contests-Plus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/ByteDance-Seed/Code-Contests-Plus), a dataset published by ByteDance Seed that aggregates competitive programming problems from platforms including Codeforces, AIZU, AtCoder, and CodeChef.

## Citation

If you find RobustTests useful in your research, please cite our paper:

```bibtex
@article{zhang2026robust,
  title={Robust Code RL via Faulty-Code-Driven Test Case Synthesis and Dense Reward Shaping},
  author={Zhang, Yiwen and Yan, Xiaodong and Huang, Zhenyu and Zhao, Deng and Jiang, Liang and Cui, Qing and Wen, Zujie and Zhang, Zhiqiang and Zhou, Jun},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.24135},
  year={2026}
}
```

## License

This project is licensed under **CC-BY-4.0**. See the [LICENSE](LICENSE) file for details.

## Acknowledgements

- [Code-Contests-Plus](https://huggingface.co/datasets/ByteDance-Seed/Code-Contests-Plus) — the ByteDance Seed dataset that provides the problems these test cases are designed for.
- The competitive programming platforms (Codeforces, AIZU, AtCoder, CodeChef) that originally host these problems.