Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Automatic Program Repair Using Formal Verification and Expression Templates

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11388))

Abstract

We present an automated approach to repair programs using formal verification and expression templates. In our approach, an input program is first verified against its formal specification to discover potentially buggy statements. For each of these statements, we identify the expression that needs to be repaired and set up a template patch which is a linear expression composed of the program’s variables and unknown coefficients. Then, we analyze the template-patched program against the original specification to collect a set of constraints of the template patch. This constraint set will be solved by a constraint solving technique using Farkas’ lemma to identify the unknown coefficients, consequently discovering the actual patch. We implement our approach in a tool called Maple and evaluate it with various buggy programs from a widely used benchmark TCAS, and a synthetic yet challenging benchmark containing recursive programs. Our tool can quickly discover the correct patches and outperforms the state-of-the-art program repair tools.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Our specification contains 34 lines, while the original program has 142 lines of code.

  2. 2.

    The correct and the overfitted patches are classified by comparing the similarity in the structures of the repaired and the originally correct programs.

References

  1. Chin, W.-N., David, C., Nguyen, H.H., Qin, S.: Automated verification of shape, size and bag properties via user-defined predicates in separation logic. Sci. Comput. Program. (SCP) 77(9), 1006–1036 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Colón, M.A., Sankaranarayanan, S., Sipma, H.B.: Linear invariant generation using non-linear constraint solving. In: Hunt, W.A., Somenzi, F. (eds.) CAV 2003. LNCS, vol. 2725, pp. 420–432. Springer, Heidelberg (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45069-6_39

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Do, H., Elbaum, S.G., Rothermel, G.: Supporting controlled experimentation with testing techniques: an infrastructure and its potential impact. Empirical Softw. Eng. 10(4), 405–435 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Hoare, C.A.R.: An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Commun. ACM 12(10), 576–580 (1969)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Huth, M., Ryan, M.: Logic in Computer Science: Modelling and Reasoning About Systems. Cambridge University Press, New York (2004). ISBN 052154310X

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. ISO. ISO/IEC 9899: 2011 information technology - programming languages - C. Int. Organ. Stand. 27, 59 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Jones, J.A., Harrold, M.J., Stasko, J.T.: Visualization of test information to assist fault localization. In: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 467–477 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Kneuss, E., Koukoutos, M., Kuncak, V.: Deductive program repair. In: Kroening, D., Păsăreanu, C.S. (eds.) CAV 2015. LNCS, vol. 9207, pp. 217–233. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21668-3_13

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Könighofer, R., Bloem, R.: Automated error localization and correction for imperative programs. In: International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD), pp. 91–100 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Könighofer, R., Bloem, R.: Repair with on-the-fly program analysis. In: Biere, A., Nahir, A., Vos, T. (eds.) HVC 2012. LNCS, vol. 7857, pp. 56–71. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39611-3_11

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Le Goues, C., Nguyen, T., Forrest, S., Weimer, W.: GenProg: a generic method for automatic software repair. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 38(1), 54–72 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Leino, K.R.M.: Dafny: an automatic program verifier for functional correctness. In: Clarke, E.M., Voronkov, A. (eds.) LPAR 2010. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6355, pp. 348–370. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17511-4_20

    Chapter  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Logozzo, F., Ball, T.: Modular and verified automatic program repair. In: International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications (OOPSLA), pp. 133–146 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Long, F., Rinard, M.: Staged program repair with condition synthesis. In: Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 166–178 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Mechtaev, S., Yi, J., Roychoudhury, A.: Angelix: scalable multiline program patch synthesis via symbolic analysis. In: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 691–701 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  16. de Moura, L., Bjørner, N.: Z3: an efficient SMT solver. In: Ramakrishnan, C.R., Rehof, J. (eds.) TACAS 2008. LNCS, vol. 4963, pp. 337–340. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78800-3_24

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Nguyen, H.D.T., Qi, D., Roychoudhury, A., Chandra, S.: SemFix: program repair via semantic analysis. In: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 772–781 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Pei, Y., Furia, C.A., Nordio, M., Wei, Y., Meyer, B., Zeller, A.: Automated fixing of programs with contracts. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 40(5), 427–449 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Program Repair Website (2018). http://program-repair.org/. Accessed 18 Sept 2018

  20. Qi, Y., Mao, X., Lei, Y., Dai, Z., Wang, C.: The strength of random search on automated program repair. In: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 254–265 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Rothenberg, B.-C., Grumberg, O.: Sound and complete mutation-based program repair. In: Fitzgerald, J., Heitmeyer, C., Gnesi, S., Philippou, A. (eds.) FM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9995, pp. 593–611. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48989-6_36

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Smith, E.K., Barr, E.T., Le Goues, C., Brun, Y.: Is the cure worse than the disease? Overfitting in automated program repair. In: Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 532–543 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ta, Q.-T., Le, T.C., Khoo, S.C., Chin, W.N.: Automated lemma synthesis in symbolic-heap separation logic. In: Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), pp. 9:1–9:29 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Ta, Q.-T., Le, T.C., Khoo, S.-C., Chin, W.-N.: Automated mutual explicit induction proof in separation logic. In: Fitzgerald, J., Heitmeyer, C., Gnesi, S., Philippou, A. (eds.) FM 2016. LNCS, vol. 9995, pp. 659–676. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48989-6_40

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. van Tonder, R., Le Goues, C.: Static automated program repair for heap properties. In: International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 151–162 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Verma, S., Roy, S.: Synergistic debug-repair of heap manipulations. In: Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 163–173 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Weimer, W., Forrest, S., Le Goues, C., Nguyen, T.: Automatic program repair with evolutionary computation. Commun. ACM 53(5), 109–116 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Xin, Q., Reiss, S.P.: Identifying test-suite-overfitted patches through test case generation. In: International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, pp. 226–236 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Yang, J., Zhikhartsev, A., Liu, Y., Tan, L.: Better test cases for better automated program repair. In: Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), pp. 831–841 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Yu, Z., Martinez, M., Danglot, B., Durieux, T., Monperrus, M.: Test case generation for program repair: a study of feasibility and effectiveness. CoRR abs/1703.00198 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. The first author would like to thank Bat-Chen Rothenberg for her help on the experimentation of AllRepair, and Xianglong Kong for sharing unit tests of the TCAS benchmark. This work is supported by the NRF grant NRF2014NCR-NCR001-030.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Thanh-Toan Nguyen, Quang-Trung Ta & Wei-Ngan Chin

Authors
  1. Thanh-Toan Nguyen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Quang-Trung Ta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wei-Ngan Chin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thanh-Toan Nguyen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIF, University Paris Diderot and CNRS, Paris, France

    Constantin Enea

  2. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ruzica Piskac

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Nguyen, TT., Ta, QT., Chin, WN. (2019). Automatic Program Repair Using Formal Verification and Expression Templates. In: Enea, C., Piskac, R. (eds) Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation. VMCAI 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11245-5_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11245-5_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11244-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11245-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation