2007 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Shape Analysis for Composite Data Structures
Authors : Josh Berdine, Cristiano Calcagno, Byron Cook, Dino Distefano, Peter W. O’Hearn, Thomas Wies, Hongseok Yang
Published in: Computer Aided Verification
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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We propose a shape analysis that adapts to some of the complex composite data structures found in industrial systems-level programs. Examples of such data structures include “cyclic doubly-linked lists of acyclic singly-linked lists”, “singly-linked lists of cyclic doubly-linked lists with back-pointers to head nodes”, etc. The analysis introduces the use of generic higher-order inductive predicates describing spatial relationships together with a method of synthesizing new parameterized spatial predicates which can be used in combination with the higher-order predicates. In order to evaluate the proposed approach for realistic programs we have performed experiments on examples drawn from device drivers: the analysis proved safety of the data structure manipulation of several routines belonging to an IEEE 1394 (firewire) driver, and also found several previously unknown memory safety bugs.