Abstract
We describe flow-insensitive type qualifiers, a lightweight, practical mechanism for specifying and checking properties not captured by traditional type systems. We present a framework for adding new, user-specified type qualifiers to programming languages with static type systems, such as C and Java. In our system, programmers add a few type qualifier annotations to their program, and automatic type qualifier inference determines the remaining qualifiers and checks the annotations for consistency. We describe a tool CQual for adding type qualifiers to the C programming language. Our tool CQual includes a visualization component for displaying browsable inference results to the programmer. Finally, we present several experiments using our tool, including inferring const qualifiers, finding security vulnerabilities in several popular C programs, and checking initialization data usage in the Linux kernel. Our results suggest that inference and visualization make type qualifiers lightweight, that type qualifier inference scales to large programs, and that type qualifiers are applicable to a wide variety of problems.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems
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.
