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Compositional Analysis of C/C++ Programs with VeriSoft

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Abstract

This paper describes how the state space exploration ool VeriSoft can be used to analyze parallel C/C++ programs compositionally. VeriSoft is employed for two analyses: transition traceanalysis and assume/guarantee reasoning. Both analyses are compositional in the sense that the behaviour of a parallel program is determined in terms of the behaviour of its constituent processes. While both analyses have traditionally been carried out with “pencil and paper”, the paper demonstrates how VeriSoft can be used to automate them. In the context of transition trace analysis, the question whether a given program can exhibit a given trace is addressed with VeriSoft. To implement assume/guarantee reasoning, VeriSoft is used to determine whether a given program satisfies a given assume/guarantee specification. Since VeriSoft’s state space exploration is bounded and thus not complete in general, our proposed analyses are only meant to complement standard reasoning about parallel programs using traces or assume/guarantee specifications. For instance, a successful analysis does not always imply the general correctness of an assume/guarantee specification. However, it increases the confidence in the verification effort. On the other hand, an unsuccessful analysis always produces a counterexample which can be used to correct the specification or the program. VeriSoft’s optimization and visualization techniques make the analyses relatively efficient and effective.

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  1. School of Computing, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Juergen Dingel

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  1. Juergen Dingel
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Dingel, J. Compositional Analysis of C/C++ Programs with VeriSoft. Acta Informatica 43, 45–71 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-006-0016-x

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