Abstract interpretation based formal methods and future challenges, invited paper (2001)
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| Venue: | Informatics — 10 Years Back, 10 Years Ahead, volume 2000 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
| Citations: | 22 - 6 self |
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@INPROCEEDINGS{Cousot01abstractinterpretation,
author = {Patrick Cousot},
title = {Abstract interpretation based formal methods and future challenges, invited paper},
booktitle = {Informatics — 10 Years Back, 10 Years Ahead, volume 2000 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
year = {2001},
pages = {138--156},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag}
}
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Abstract
Abstract. In order to contribute to the solution of the software reliability problem, tools have been designed to analyze statically the run-time behavior of programs. Because the correctness problem is undecidable, some form of approximation is needed. The purpose of abstract interpretation is to formalize this idea of approximation. We illustrate informally the application of abstraction to the semantics of programming languages as well as to static program analysis. The main point is that in order to reason or compute about a complex system, some information must be lost, that is the observation of executions must be either partial or at a high level of abstraction. In the second part of the paper, we compare static program analysis with deductive methods, model-checking and type inference. Their foundational ideas are briefly reviewed, and the shortcomings of these four methods are discussed, including when they should be combined. Alternatively, since program debugging is still the main program verification
