Loop invariant synthesis in a combined abstract domain

Automated verification of memory safety and functional correctness for heap-manipulating programs has been a challenging task, especially when dealing with complex data structures with strong invariants involving both shape and numerical properties. Existing verification systems usually rely on user...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of symbolic computation 2013-03, Vol.50, p.386-408
Main Authors: Qin, Shengchao, He, Guanhua, Luo, Chenguang, Chin, Wei-Ngan, Chen, Xin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abstraction
Combining analysis
Fixpoint analysis
Loop invariant
Numerical analysis
Separation logic
Shape analysis
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Summary:Automated verification of memory safety and functional correctness for heap-manipulating programs has been a challenging task, especially when dealing with complex data structures with strong invariants involving both shape and numerical properties. Existing verification systems usually rely on users to supply annotations to guide the verification, which can be cumbersome and error-prone by hand and can significantly restrict the usability of the verification system. In this paper, we reduce the need for some user annotations by automatically inferring loop invariants over an abstract domain with both shape and numerical information. Our loop invariant synthesis is conducted automatically by a fixed-point iteration process, equipped with newly designed abstraction mechanism, together with join and widening operators over the combined domain. We have also proven the soundness and termination of our approach. Initial experiments confirm that we can synthesise loop invariants with non-trivial constraints.
ISSN:0747-7171
1095-855X
DOI:10.1016/j.jsc.2012.08.007