论文精选73°

LLM代码生成中的复合提示约束研究

Compound Prompt Constraints in LLM Code Generation: A Factorial Study of Format, Persona, and Urgency

精选理由

OpenAI等模型在复合提示下表现差异大,JSON+专家角色+中等紧急程度组合导致GPT-4o-mini性能下降12.2个百分点。

AI 摘要

该研究通过3x3x3全因子设计,测试了格式、角色设定和紧急程度27种组合对LLM代码生成可靠性的影响。研究使用164个HumanEval+问题,在GPT-4o、GPT-4.1和o3-mini五个模型上进行了22,140次评估。结果显示复合约束会导致架构相关的性能下降,GPT-4o系列出现超加性效应,而GPT-4.1系列基本不受影响,o3-mini则表现出不同模式。

原文 · arXiv: OpenAI

Compound Prompt Constraints in LLM Code Generation: A Factorial Study of Format, Persona, and Urgency

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in software engineering pipelines for code generation, where production prompts often combine multiple constraints. This paper presents a full-factorial empirical study of how output formatting, persona assignment, and urgency framing jointly affect LLM code-generation reliability. We evaluate all 27 combinations in a controlled 3x3x3 design and decompose each compound condition into an additive prediction and a residual interaction term that captures super-additive degradation. The study uses all 164 HumanEval+ problems across five OpenAI models from the GPT-4o family, GPT-4.1 family, and o3-mini, yielding 22,140 greedy-decoding evaluations. A format-aware extraction pipeline separates formatting failures from reasoning failures, and significance is assessed with McNemar's test, odds ratios, and 95% confidence intervals. Results show that compound constraints can produce architecture-dependent degradation not predictable from single-factor experiments. The GPT-4o family exhibits consistent super-additive effects, with pass@1 reductions 3-12 percentage points beyond additive predictions; the largest interaction is -12.2 pp on GPT-4o-mini for JSON + expert persona + moderate urgency. JSON combinations generally produce larger interactions than XML. In contrast, the GPT-4.1 family is largely resistant, while o3-mini shows a qualitatively different pattern in which structured output constraints can improve performance. These findings show that vulnerability is architecture-dependent rather than size-dependent, that individually neutral or beneficial constraints can combine to cause substantial degradation, and that compound-prompt testing should be standard in reliability assessment for LLM-assisted engineering pipelines.