Abstract

. A new algorithm is presented that automatically uncovers memory errors such as NULL pointers dereference and memory leaks in C programs. The algorithm is conservative, i.e., it can never miss an error but may report "false alarms". When applied to several intricate C programs manipulating singly linked lists, the new algorithm yields more accurate results, does not report any false alarm and usually runs even faster and consumes less space than a less precise algorithm. 1 Introduction Many nasty bugs result from misusing memory by NULL pointer dereference, access to freed storage, or memory leaks. We refer to these errors as memory cleanness errors since they should never occur in bug-free programs. No wonder that many academic and commercial projects are aimed at producing tools that detect classes of memory cleanness problems (see Section 4.1). This paper does not intend to introduce another shape analysis or pointer analysis algorithms. Instead, we focus on detecting clea...

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