Skip to main content

Towards Automatic Exception Safety Verification

  • Conference paper
Book cover FM 2006: Formal Methods (FM 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4085))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Many programming languages provide exceptions as a structured way for detecting and recovering from abnormal conditions. However, using exceptions properly is non-trivial. Programmers are often careless when handling exceptions, and exception related mistakes are common in software products. We present a technique for verifying that exceptions are used in a safe way. This technique integrates static analysis with model checking to visit all possible exception-raising execution paths. To demonstrate the potential utility of our approach, we applied it to two open source Java applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. The fizmez web server. see: http://fizmez.com/

  2. Kopi Java open source compiler. see: http://www.dms.at/kopi

  3. Arnold, K., Gosling, J., Holmes, D.: The Java Programming Language. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Corbett, J.C., Dwyer, M.B., Hatcliff, J., Laubach, S., Păsăreanu, C.S., Robby, Hongjun, Z.: Bandera: extracting finite-state models from Java source code. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 439–448 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Drossopoulou, S., Valkevych, T., Eisenbach, S.: Java type soundness revisited. Technical report, Imperial College (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Elonen, J.: The nanohttpd http server. see: elonen.iki.fi/code/nanohttpd

  7. Flanagan, C., Leino, K.R.M., M., Lillibridge, M., Nelson, G., Saxe, J.B., Stata, R.: Extended static checking for java. In: PLDI, pp. 234–245 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Goodwin, P.: Exception patterns. See: http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExceptionPatterns

  9. Huth, M., Ryan, M.: Logic in Computer Science: Modelling and Reasoning about Systems, 2nd edn., Cambridge (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Jo, J.-W., Chang, B.-M., Yi, K., Choe, K.-M.: An uncaught exception analysis for Java. Journal of Systems and Software 72(1), 59–69 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Leavens, G.T., Baker, A.L., Ruby, C.: JML: A notation for detailed design. In: Kilov, H., Rumpe, B., Simmonds, I. (eds.) Behavioral Specifications of Businesses and Systems, pp. 175–188. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Leino, K.R.M., Schulte, W.: Exception safety for C#. In: SEFM, pp. 218–227 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Maxion, R.A., Olszewski, R.T.: Improving software robustness with dependability cases. In: Digest of Papers. Twenty-Eighth Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, pp. 346–355 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Robby, Dwyer, M.B., Hatcliff, J.: Bogor: an extensible and highly-modular software model checking framework. In: ESEC / SIGSOFT FSE, pp. 267–276 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Robillard, M.P., Murphy, G.C.: Static analysis to support the evolution of exception structure in object-oriented systems. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. 12(2), 191–221 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Stroustrup, B.: The C++ Programming Language. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Visser, W., Havelund, K., Brat, G., Park, S.: Model checking programs. In: ASE 2000: Proceedings of the The Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2000), Washington, DC, USA, p. 3. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Weimer, W., Necula, G.C.: Finding and preventing run-time error handling mistakes. In: OOPSLA, pp. 419–431 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Weiser, M.: Program slicing. IEEE Trans. Software Eng. 10(4), 352–357 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Li, X., Hoover, H.J., Rudnicki, P. (2006). Towards Automatic Exception Safety Verification. In: Misra, J., Nipkow, T., Sekerinski, E. (eds) FM 2006: Formal Methods. FM 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4085. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11813040_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11813040_27

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-37215-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-37216-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics