Discovering relational specifications

Smith, Calvin; Ferns, Gabriel; Albarghouthi, Aws

doi:10.1145/3106237.3106279

Cited by 12 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Similarly, in their work on discovering relational specifications, Smith et al discover specifications by looking at program outputs [45]. Our approach is fully static does not require running the code.…”

Section: H a Study Of The Inferred Specificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inferring Concise Specifications of APIs

Singleton,

Leavens,

Rajan

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Modern software relies on libraries and uses them via application programming interfaces (APIs). Correct API usage as well as many software engineering tasks are enabled when APIs have formal specifications. In this work, we analyze the implementation of each method in an API to infer a formal postcondition. Conventional wisdom is that, if one has preconditions, then one can use the strongest postcondition predicate transformer (SP) to infer postconditions. However, SP yields postconditions that are exponentially large, which makes them difficult to use, either by humans or by tools. Our key idea is an algorithm that converts such exponentially large specifications into a form that is more concise and thus more usable. This is done by leveraging the structure of the specifications that result from the use of SP. We applied our technique to infer postconditions for over 2,300 methods in seven popular Java libraries. Our technique was able to infer specifications for 75.7% of these methods, each of which was verified using an Extended Static Checker. We also found that 84.6% of resulting specifications were less than 1/4 page (20 lines) in length. Our technique was able to reduce the length of SMT proofs needed for verifying implementations by 76.7% and reduced prover execution time by 26.7%.

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Section: H a Study Of The Inferred Specificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inferring Concise Specifications of APIs

Singleton,

Leavens,

Rajan

et al. 2019

Preprint

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show abstract

“…Bach The Bach [13] tool uses a database of examples of input/output values from functions to synthesise properties using a Datalog-based oracle. It uses a notion of evidence to decide whether an inferred property holds: negative evidence consists of counterexamples; positive evidence consists of witnesses.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cheap Remarks About Concurrent Programs

Walker

Runciman

2018

Functional and Logic Programming

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Abstract. We present CoCo, the Concurrency Commentator, a tool that recovers a declarative view of concurrent Haskell functions operating on some shared state. This declarative view is presented as a collection of automatically discovered properties. These properties are about refinement and equivalence of effects, rather than equality of final results. The tool is based on testing in a dynamically pruned search-space, rather than static analysis or theorem proving. Case studies about concurrent stacks and semaphores demonstrate how use of CoCo can inform understanding of program behaviour.

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Program Synthesis with Equivalence Reduction

Smith

Albarghouthi

2019

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Discovering relational specifications

Cited by 12 publications

References 20 publications

Inferring Concise Specifications of APIs

Inferring Concise Specifications of APIs

Cheap Remarks About Concurrent Programs

Program Synthesis with Equivalence Reduction

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