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A Lightweight Approach for Loop Summarization

  • Conference paper
Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis (ATVA 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 6996))

Abstract

A problem common to most of the tools based on the abstraction refinement paradigm is the divergence of the CEGAR process. In particular, infinitely many (spurious) counterexamples may arise from unfolding the same (while- or for-) loop in the given program again and again; this leads to an infinite or at least too large sequence of refinement steps. Loop summarization is an approach that permits to overcome this problem. It consists of abstracting not just states but also the state changes (transition relation) induced by structured program statements. The effectiveness of this approach depends on two factors: (a) the computation of loop summaries must not be the bottleneck of the verification algorithm (b) loop summaries must be precise enough to prove the property of interest. We present a technique that permits to achieve both goals. It uses inference rules to compute summaries. A lightweight test is performed to check whether a given loop matches the premise of a given rule. If so, a summary is automatically inferred by instantiating the rule. Despite its simplicity, our technique performs well in practice. We were able to verify safety properties for many examples which are out of the scope of several existing tools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of Oxford, UK

    Mohamed Nassim Seghir

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  1. Mohamed Nassim Seghir
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Tevfik Bultan

  2. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, 168 University Road, Min-Hsiung, 62102, Chiayi, Taiwan, ROC

    Pao-Ann Hsiung

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Seghir, M.N. (2011). A Lightweight Approach for Loop Summarization. In: Bultan, T., Hsiung, PA. (eds) Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis. ATVA 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6996. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24372-1_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24372-1_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-24371-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-24372-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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