Footprint analysis: a shape analysis that discovers preconditions

  • Authors:
  • Cristiano Calcagno;Dino Distefano;Peter W. O'Hearn;Hongseok Yang

  • Affiliations:
  • Imperial College, London;Queen Mary, University of London;Queen Mary, University of London;Queen Mary, University of London

  • Venue:
  • SAS'07 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Static Analysis
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Existing shape analysis algorithms infer descriptions of data structures at program points, starting from a given precondition. We describe an analysis that does not require any preconditions. It works by attempting to infer a description of only the cells that might be accessed, following the footprint idea in separation logic. The analysis allows us to establish a true Hoare triple for a piece of code, independently of the context in which it occurs and without a whole-program analysis. We present experimental results for a range of typical list-processing algorithms, as well as for code fragments from a Windows device driver.