A method for generating test cases for a program is disclosed. The method combines features of path-oriented and goal-oriented software testing. The illustrative embodiment constructs a control-flow graph with nodes that correspond to invocations of subroutines, and constructs control-flow graphs for the source code of such nodes as well. A metric that is based on the topology of the control-flow graph is evaluated recursively for nodes of the graph and for control-flow graphs that correspond to invoked subroutines. In the illustrative embodiment, the metric employed is the length of a shortest path from the starting node to a particular node. A node n with the highest metric value is then selected as a goal, and a path from the starting node to the ending node that passes through node n is generated via backtracking.