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Classifying Bugs with Interpolants

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Tests and Proofs (TAP 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9762))

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Abstract

We present an approach to the classification of error messages in the context of static checking in the style of ESC/Java. The idea is to compute a semantics-based signature for each error message and then group together error messages with the same signature. The approach aims at exploiting modern verification techniques based on, e.g., Craig interpolation in order to generate small but significant signatures. We have implemented the approach and applied it to three benchmark sets (from Apache Ant, Apache Cassandra, and our own tool). Our experiments indicate an interesting practical potential. More than half of the considered error messages (for procedures with more than just one error message) can be grouped together with another error message.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The fact that we use a static checker is not crucial for our discussion. The error messages could also be generated using a bounded model checker such as [14, 20], or a testing tool such as Randoop [27].

  2. 2.

    Note that we use weakest preconditions, as opposed to weakest liberal preconditions; see Sect. 4. For example, the trace \(\mathtt {assume}(x = 0); \mathtt {assert}(x \not = 0)\) is not infeasible since \(\mathsf {wp}(\mathtt {assume}(x = 0); \mathtt {assert}(x \not = 0), \bot ) \;=\; (x = 0 \Rightarrow (x \not = 0 \wedge \bot )) \;=\; (x \not = 0)\).

  3. 3.

    In the general case, we may not be able to describe \(s_0\) using simple equalities and instead must consider its diagram [6]. For the sake of the clarity of presentation, we skim over these technicalities.

  4. 4.

    http://www.csl.sri.com/~schaef/experiments.zip.

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Acknowledgement

This work is funded in parts by AFRL contract No. FA8750-15-C-0010 and the National Science Foundation under grant CCF-1350574.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

    Andreas Podelski

  2. SRI International, Menlo Park, USA

    Martin Schäf

  3. New York University, New York, USA

    Thomas Wies

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  1. Andreas Podelski
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Correspondence to Martin Schäf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Bernhard K. Aichernig

  2. Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

    Carlo A. Furia

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Podelski, A., Schäf, M., Wies, T. (2016). Classifying Bugs with Interpolants. In: Aichernig, B., Furia, C. (eds) Tests and Proofs. TAP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9762. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41135-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41135-4_9

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