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Slicing from formal semantics: Chisel—a tool for generic program slicing

  • FASE 2017
  • Published:
International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We describe Chisel, a tool that synthesizes a program slicer directly from a given algebraic specification of a programming language operational semantics \(\mathcal {S}\). \(\mathcal {S}\) is assumed to be a rewriting logic specification, given in Maude, while the program is a ground term of this specification. Chisel takes \(\mathcal {S}\) and synthesizes language constructs, i.e., instructions, that produce features relevant for slicing, e.g., data dependency. We implement syntheses adjusted to each feature as model checking properties over an abstract representation of \(\mathcal {S}\). The syntheses results are used by a traditional interprocedural slicing algorithm that we parameterize by the synthesized language features. We present the tool on two language paradigms: high-level, imperative and low-level, assembly languages. Computing program slices for these languages allows for extracting traceability properties in standard compilation chains and makes our tool fitting for the validation of embedded system designs. Chisel’s slicing benchmark evaluation is based on benchmarks used in avionics.

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Notes

  1. Note that these programs are defined to illustrate Chisel features, so they do not produce any relevant output when executed.

  2. Actually, Chisel works without an explicit distinction between syntax and memory modules, because it operates at the sort level. We present this scenario to simplify the description.

  3. The instruction skip is introduced to mark the end of the evaluation of each instruction and stands for a fully evaluated program.

  4. Note that s denotes a sort while w denotes a list of sorts.

  5. It is unlikely to find one of these sorts only in the co-arity, except for constructors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inria, Paris, France

    Irina Măriuca Asăvoae & Mihail Asăvoae

  2. Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Irina Măriuca Asăvoae

  3. CEA LIST, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France

    Mihail Asăvoae

  4. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Adrián Riesco

Authors
  1. Irina Măriuca Asăvoae
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  2. Mihail Asăvoae
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  3. Adrián Riesco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Adrián Riesco.

Additional information

This research has been partially supported by the MINECO Spanish project TRACES (TIN2015-67522-C3-3-R) and by the Comunidad de Madrid project N-Greens Software-CM (S2013/ICE-2731).

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Asăvoae, I.M., Asăvoae, M. & Riesco, A. Slicing from formal semantics: Chisel—a tool for generic program slicing. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 20, 739–769 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-018-0500-y

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