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Parameter-Induced Aliasing in Ada

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Reliable SoftwareTechnologies — Ada-Europe 2001 (Ada-Europe 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2043))

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Abstract

Parameter-induced aliasing means that overlapping areas of memory are associated with different identifiers causing assignments to one of them to have the unexpected effect of also changing the other’s value. The disadvantages of aliasing for most aspects of programming languages have been known for decades and it is reported that aliasing occurs quite often when programming in languages like C or Fortran. In contrast, our examination of 173 MB real-world Ada code with a total of 93690 subprogram calls revealed less than one alias pair per 10000 lines of code. Further code inspection showed that most alias pairs could have been avoided. The rare occurrence of aliasing may be one reason for the low error rate frequently reported for Ada programs. This paper presents the methods and results of our analysis. Further, it discusses two approaches to forbid aliasing by language rules and evaluates the usability of our alias-free “named container” model suggested earlier.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, Schönaicher Strasse 220, 71032, Böblingen, Germany

    Wolfgang Gellerich

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Stuttgart, Breitwiesenstrasse 20-22, 70565, Stuttgart, Germany

    Erhard Plödereder

Authors
  1. Wolfgang Gellerich
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  2. Erhard Plödereder
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Offis nv/sa - Aubay Group, Offis & K.U. Leuven, Weiveldlaan 41/32, 1930, Zaventem, Belgium

    Dirk Craeynest

  2. EPFL-DI-LGL, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), 1015, Lausanne EPFL, Switzerland

    Alfred Strohmeier

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gellerich, W., Plödereder, E. (2001). Parameter-Induced Aliasing in Ada. In: Craeynest, D., Strohmeier, A. (eds) Reliable SoftwareTechnologies — Ada-Europe 2001. Ada-Europe 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2043. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45136-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45136-6_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42123-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45136-5

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