Region-based memory management in cyclone

Grossman, Dan; Morrisett, Greg; Jim, Trevor; Hicks, Michael; Wang, Yanling; Cheney, James

doi:10.1145/512561.512563

Cited by 47 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(30 reference statements)

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“…Providing this feature in a type-safe manner will be challenging because G provides stack allocation, though region-based techniques may provide a solution [92,93].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A language for generic programming in the large

Siek

Lumsdaine

2011

Science of Computer Programming

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a b s t r a c tGeneric programming is an effective methodology for developing reusable software libraries. Many programming languages provide generics and have features for describing interfaces, but none completely support the idioms used in generic programming. To address this need we developed the language G. The central feature of G is the concept, a mechanism for organizing constraints on generics that is inspired by the needs of modern C++ libraries. G provides modular type checking and separate compilation (even of generics). These characteristics support modular software development, especially the smooth integration of independently developed components. In this article we present the rationale for the design of G and demonstrate the expressiveness of G with two case studies: porting the Standard Template Library and the Boost Graph Library from C++ to G. The design of G shares much in common with the concept extension proposed for the next C++ Standard (the authors participated in its design) but there are important differences described in this article.

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“…Providing this feature in a type-safe manner will be challenging because G provides stack allocation, though region-based techniques may provide a solution [92,93].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A language for generic programming in the large

Siek

Lumsdaine

2011

Science of Computer Programming

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“…Moreover, the runtime overhead of CCured renders it unsuitable for the analysis of operating systems and low-level software that has performance requirements. Vault [16] and Cyclone [17] are safe variants of the C programming language. They enforce static and dynamic safety restrictions to prevent runtime errors.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interprocedural and Flow-Sensitive Type Analysis for Memory and Type Safety of C Code

Tlili

Debbabi

2009

J Autom Reasoning

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The explicit memory management and type conversion endow the C language with flexibility and performance that render it the de facto language for system programming. However, these appealing features come at the cost of programs' safety. Due to the C language permissiveness, highly skilled but inadvertent programmers often spawn insidious programming errors that yield exploitable code. In this paper, we present a novel type and effect analysis for detecting memory and type errors in C source code. We extend the standard C type system with effect, region, and host annotations that hold valuable safety information. We also define static safety checks to detect safety errors using the aforementioned annotations. Our analysis performs in an intraprocedural phase and an interprocedural phase. The flow-sensitive and alias-sensitive intraprocedural phase propagates type annotations and applies safety checks at each program point. The interprocedural phase generates and propagates unification constraints on type annotations across function boundaries. We present an inference algorithm that automatically infers type annotations and applies safety checks to programs without programmers' interaction.Keywords Type and effect analysis · Memory safety · Type safety · C language This research is the result of a fruitful collaboration between CSL (

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“…The annotation "; {}" on the function's prototype is an empty "effect". The fact that it is empty effectively denotes that 'r need not be live when the function is called (see our earlier paper [3] or the Cyclone manual for more detail on effects). Within the body of ins typedef, t may not be dereferenced until it can be shown that the region of t is live.…”

Section: Dynamic Arenasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous work [3], we described an integration of BDW with safe stack allocation and LIFO arena allocation; in both cases all objects are deallocated at once when the relevant scope is exited. A regionbased type-and-effect system based upon the work of Tofte and Talpin [4] ensured safety while providing enough polymorphism for reusable code to operate over data allocated anywhere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe manual memory management in Cyclone

Swamy

Hicks

Morrisett

et al. 2006

Science of Computer Programming

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The goal of the Cyclone project is to investigate how to make a low-level C-like language safe. Our most difficult challenge has been providing programmers with control over memory management while retaining safety. This paper describes our experience trying to integrate and use effectively two previously-proposed, safe memory-management mechanisms: statically-scoped regions and tracked pointers. We found that these typing mechanisms can be combined to build alternative memory-management abstractions, such as reference counted objects and arenas with dynamic lifetimes, and thus provide a flexible basis. Our experience -porting C programs and device drivers, and building new applications for resource-constrained systems -confirms that experts can use these features to improve memory footprint and sometimes to improve throughput when used instead of, or in combination with, conservative garbage collection.

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Region-based memory management in cyclone

Cited by 47 publications

References 23 publications

A language for generic programming in the large

A language for generic programming in the large

Interprocedural and Flow-Sensitive Type Analysis for Memory and Type Safety of C Code

Safe manual memory management in Cyclone

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