Publication details

String Abstraction for Model Checking of C Programs

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Authors

ROČKAI Petr LAUKO Henrich OLLIARO Martina CORTESI Agostino

Year of publication 2019
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Model Checking Software
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Informatics

Citation
Web https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-30923-7_5
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30923-7_5
Keywords Symbolic Computation; String Abstraction; DIVINE; LLVM; Transformation; Verification; Model Checking; C; C++
Description Automatic abstraction is a powerful software verification technique. In this paper, we elaborate an abstract domain for C strings, that is, null-terminated arrays of characters. We describe the abstract semantics of basic string operations and prove their soundness with regards to previously established concrete semantics of those operations. In addition to a selection of string functions from the standard C library, we provide semantics for character access and update, enabling automatic lifting of arbitrary string-manipulating code into the domain. The domain we present (called M-String) has two other abstract domains as its parameters: an index (bound) domain and a character domain. Picking different constituent domains allows M-String to be tailored for specific verification tasks, balancing precision against complexity. In addition to describing the domain theoretically, we also provide an executable implementation of the abstract operations. Using a tool which automatically lifts existing programs into the M-String domain along with an explicit-state model checker, we have evaluated the proposed domain experimentally on a few simple but realistic test programs.
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