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Exploring very large state spaces using genetic algorithms

  • Special section on tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems
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Abstract

We present a novel framework for exploring very large state spaces of concurrent reactive systems. Our framework exploits application-independent heuristics using genetic algorithms to guide a state-space search toward error states. We have implemented this framework in conjunction with VeriSoft, a tool for exploring the state spaces of software applications composed of several concurrent processes executing arbitrary code. We present experimental results obtained with several examples of programs, including a C implementation of a public-key authentication protocol. We discuss heuristics and properties of state spaces that help a genetic search detect deadlocks and assertion violations. For finding errors in very large state spaces, our experiments show that a genetic search using simple heuristics can significantly outperform random and systematic searches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories, Lisle, IL, USA

    Patrice Godefroid

  2. Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sarfraz Khurshid

Authors
  1. Patrice Godefroid
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  2. Sarfraz Khurshid
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Correspondence to Patrice Godefroid.

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Godefroid, P., Khurshid, S. Exploring very large state spaces using genetic algorithms. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 6, 117–127 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-004-0141-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-004-0141-1

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