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An Abstract Domain for Heap Commutativity

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Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI 2025)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 15530))

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Abstract

Commutativity of program code (i.e. the equivalence of two code fragments composed in alternate orders) is of ongoing interest in many settings such as program verification, scalable concurrency, and security analysis. While some have explored static analysis for code commutativity, few have specifically catered to heap-manipulating programs. We introduce an abstract domain in which commutativity synthesis or verification techniques can safely be performed on abstract mathematical models and, from those results, one can directly obtain commutativity conditions for concrete heap programs. This approach offloads challenges of concrete heap reasoning into the simpler abstract space. We show this reasoning supports framing and composition, and conclude with commutativity analysis of programs operating on example heap data structures. Our work has been mechanized in Coq and is available in the supplement.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Marco Gaboardi, David Naumann, VFC, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions of this draft. Both authors were partially supported by NSF award #2008633. Koskinen was partially supported by NSF award #2315363. Pincus was partially supported by NSF award #1801564.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Jared Pincus

  2. Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, 07030, USA

    Eric Koskinen

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  1. Jared Pincus
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Correspondence to Jared Pincus .

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  1. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Krishna Shankaranarayanan

  2. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Sriram Sankaranarayanan

  3. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Ashutosh Trivedi

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Pincus, J., Koskinen, E. (2025). An Abstract Domain for Heap Commutativity. In: Shankaranarayanan, K., Sankaranarayanan, S., Trivedi, A. (eds) Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation. VMCAI 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15530. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82703-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-82703-7_2

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