P. Cousot, R. Cousot, and F. Logozzo, Contract Precondition Inference from Intermittent Assertions on Collections

Patrick Cousot, Radhia Cousot, and Francesco Logozzo
Contract Precondition Inference from Intermittent Assertions on Collections
Software Engineering and Programming Languages Seminar, MSR, Redmond, WA, USA, September 8, 2010
Abstract:
In the context of design by contracts, programmers often insert assertions in their code to be optionally checked at runtime, at least during the debugging phase. These assertions would better be given as a precondition of the method/procedure which can detect that a caller has violated the procedure's contract in a way which definitely leads to an assertion violation (e.g. for separate static analysis). We define precisely and formally the contract inference problem from intermittent assertions inserted in the code by the programmer. Our definition excludes no good run even when a non-deterministic choice (e.g. an interactive input) could lead to a bad one. We then introduce new abstract interpretation-based methods to automatically infer both the static contract precondition of a method/procedure and the code to check it at runtime on scalar and collection variables.
Slides of the 60 mn presentation (to be used with Acrobat Reader):
- .pdf, 1 slide per page (19.3 Mb)
- .pdf, 4 slide per page (34.3 Mb)

Bibliographic reference:

\bibitem{CousotPRLogozzo-MSR-2010-09-08}
P.~Cousot, R.~Cousot, and F.~Logozzo.
\newblock Contract Precondition Inference from Intermittent Assertions on Collections.
\newblock Software Engineering and Programming Languages Seminar, MSR, Redmond, WA, USA, September 8, 2010.

@inProceedings{CousotPRLogozzo-MSR-2010-09-08,
   author =    {P.~Cousot and R. Cousot},
   title =     {Contract Precondition Inference from Intermittent Assertions on Collections},
   booktitle = {Software Engineering and Programming Languages Seminar},
   address =   {MSR, Redmond, WA, USA},
   month =     {September 8},
   year =      {2010},
}

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