ConSUS: a light-weight program conditioner

  • Authors:

  • Sebastian Danicic;Mohammed Daoudi;Chris Fox;Mark Harman;Robert M. Hierons;John R. Howroyd;Lahcen Ourabya;Martin Ward

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom;Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, United Kingdom;Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, United Kingdom;Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom;Software Technology Research Laboratory, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH, United Kingdom

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software - Special issue: Software reverse engineering
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Program conditioning consists of identifying and removing a set of statements which cannot be executed when a condition of interest holds at some point in a program. It has been applied to problems in maintenance, testing, re-use and re-engineering. All current approaches to program conditioning rely upon both symbolic execution and reasoning about symbolic predicates. The reasoning can be performed by a 'heavy duty' theorem prover but this may impose unrealistic performance constraints. This paper reports on a lightweight approach to theorem proving using the FermaT Simplify decision procedure. This is used as a component to ConSUS, a program conditioning system for the Wide Spectrum Language WSL. The paper describes the symbolic execution algorithm used by ConSUS, which prunes as it conditions. The paper also provides empirical evidence that conditioning produces a significant reduction in program size and, although exponential in the worst case, the conditioning system has low degree polynomial behaviour in many cases, thereby making it scalable to unit level applications of program conditioning.