Model and Proof Generation for Heap-Manipulating Programs

Martin Brain, Cristina David, Daniel Kroening, Peter Schrammel

Abstract: Existing heap analysis techniques lack the ability to supply counterexamples in case of property violations. This hinders diagnosis, prevents test-case generation and is a barrier to the use of these tools among non-experts. We present a verification technique for reasoning about aliasing and reachability in the heap which uses ACDCL (a combination of the well-known CDCL SAT algorithm and abstract interpretation) to perform interleaved proof generation and model construction. Abstraction provides us with a tractable way of reasoning about heaps; ACDCL adds the ability to search for a model in an efficient way. We present a prototype tool and demonstrate a number of examples for which we are able to obtain useful concrete counterexamples.