9,937 research outputs found
A Logic of Reachable Patterns in Linked Data-Structures
We define a new decidable logic for expressing and checking invariants of
programs that manipulate dynamically-allocated objects via pointers and
destructive pointer updates. The main feature of this logic is the ability to
limit the neighborhood of a node that is reachable via a regular expression
from a designated node. The logic is closed under boolean operations
(entailment, negation) and has a finite model property. The key technical
result is the proof of decidability. We show how to express precondition,
postconditions, and loop invariants for some interesting programs. It is also
possible to express properties such as disjointness of data-structures, and
low-level heap mutations. Moreover, our logic can express properties of
arbitrary data-structures and of an arbitrary number of pointer fields. The
latter provides a way to naturally specify postconditions that relate the
fields on entry to a procedure to the fields on exit. Therefore, it is possible
to use the logic to automatically prove partial correctness of programs
performing low-level heap mutations
Introspective Pushdown Analysis of Higher-Order Programs
In the static analysis of functional programs, pushdown flow analysis and
abstract garbage collection skirt just inside the boundaries of soundness and
decidability. Alone, each method reduces analysis times and boosts precision by
orders of magnitude. This work illuminates and conquers the theoretical
challenges that stand in the way of combining the power of these techniques.
The challenge in marrying these techniques is not subtle: computing the
reachable control states of a pushdown system relies on limiting access during
transition to the top of the stack; abstract garbage collection, on the other
hand, needs full access to the entire stack to compute a root set, just as
concrete collection does. \emph{Introspective} pushdown systems resolve this
conflict. Introspective pushdown systems provide enough access to the stack to
allow abstract garbage collection, but they remain restricted enough to compute
control-state reachability, thereby enabling the sound and precise product of
pushdown analysis and abstract garbage collection. Experiments reveal
synergistic interplay between the techniques, and the fusion demonstrates
"better-than-both-worlds" precision.Comment: Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on
Functional Programming, 2012, AC
Pushdown Control-Flow Analysis of Higher-Order Programs
Context-free approaches to static analysis gain precision over classical
approaches by perfectly matching returns to call sites---a property that
eliminates spurious interprocedural paths. Vardoulakis and Shivers's recent
formulation of CFA2 showed that it is possible (if expensive) to apply
context-free methods to higher-order languages and gain the same boost in
precision achieved over first-order programs.
To this young body of work on context-free analysis of higher-order programs,
we contribute a pushdown control-flow analysis framework, which we derive as an
abstract interpretation of a CESK machine with an unbounded stack. One
instantiation of this framework marks the first polyvariant pushdown analysis
of higher-order programs; another marks the first polynomial-time analysis. In
the end, we arrive at a framework for control-flow analysis that can
efficiently compute pushdown generalizations of classical control-flow
analyses.Comment: The 2010 Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programmin
Pruning, Pushdown Exception-Flow Analysis
Statically reasoning in the presence of exceptions and about the effects of
exceptions is challenging: exception-flows are mutually determined by
traditional control-flow and points-to analyses. We tackle the challenge of
analyzing exception-flows from two angles. First, from the angle of pruning
control-flows (both normal and exceptional), we derive a pushdown framework for
an object-oriented language with full-featured exceptions. Unlike traditional
analyses, it allows precise matching of throwers to catchers. Second, from the
angle of pruning points-to information, we generalize abstract garbage
collection to object-oriented programs and enhance it with liveness analysis.
We then seamlessly weave the techniques into enhanced reachability computation,
yielding highly precise exception-flow analysis, without becoming intractable,
even for large applications. We evaluate our pruned, pushdown exception-flow
analysis, comparing it with an established analysis on large scale standard
Java benchmarks. The results show that our analysis significantly improves
analysis precision over traditional analysis within a reasonable analysis time.Comment: 14th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis
and Manipulatio
Value-Flow-Based Demand-Driven Pointer Analysis for C and C++
IEEE We present SUPA, a value-flow-based demand-driven flow- and context-sensitive pointer analysis with strong updates for C and C++ programs. SUPA enables computing points-to information via value-flow refinement, in environments with small time and memory budgets. We formulate SUPA by solving a graph-reachability problem on an inter-procedural value-flow graph representing a program's def-use chains, which are pre-computed efficiently but over-approximately. To answer a client query (a request for a variable's points-to set), SUPA reasons about the flow of values along the pre-computed def-use chains sparsely (rather than across all program points), by performing only the work necessary for the query (rather than analyzing the whole program). In particular, strong updates are performed to filter out spurious def-use chains through value-flow refinement as long as the total budget is not exhausted
Chaining Test Cases for Reactive System Testing (extended version)
Testing of synchronous reactive systems is challenging because long input
sequences are often needed to drive them into a state at which a desired
feature can be tested. This is particularly problematic in on-target testing,
where a system is tested in its real-life application environment and the time
required for resetting is high. This paper presents an approach to discovering
a test case chain---a single software execution that covers a group of test
goals and minimises overall test execution time. Our technique targets the
scenario in which test goals for the requirements are given as safety
properties. We give conditions for the existence and minimality of a single
test case chain and minimise the number of test chains if a single test chain
is infeasible. We report experimental results with a prototype tool for C code
generated from Simulink models and compare it to state-of-the-art test suite
generators.Comment: extended version of paper published at ICTSS'1
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