Abstract
Automated program repair has the potential to reduce the developers’ effort to fix errors in their code. In particular, modern programming languages, such as Java, C, and C#, represent time as integer variables that suffer from integer overflow, introducing subtle errors that are hard to discover and repair. Recent researches on automated program repair rely on test cases to discover failures to correct, making them suitable only for regression errors. We propose a new strategy to automatically repair programs that suffer from timestamp overflows that are manifested in comparison expressions. It unifies the benefits of static analysis and automatic program repair avoiding dependency on testing to identify and correct defected code. Our approach performs an abstract analysis over the time domain of a program using a Time Type System to identify the problematic comparison expressions. The repairing strategy rewrites the timestamp comparisons exploiting the binary representation of machine numbers to correct the code. We have validated the applicability of our approach with 20 open source Java projects. The results show that it is able to correctly repair all 246 identified errors. To further validate the reliability of our approach, we have proved the soundness of both, type system and repairing strategy. Furthermore, several patches for three open source projects have been acknowledged and accepted by their developers.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.