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2012•ACM SIGPLAN NoticesRequires access

An executable formal semantics of C with applications

Chucky Ellison, Grigore Roşu

Open publisher page 186 citations

Abstract

This paper describes an executable formal semantics of C. Being executable, the semantics has been thoroughly tested against the GCC torture test suite and successfully passes 99.2% of 776 test programs. It is the most complete and thoroughly tested formal definition of C to date. The semantics yields an interpreter, debugger, state space search tool, and model checker "for free". The semantics is shown capable of automatically finding program errors, both statically and at runtime. It is also used to enumerate nondeterministic behavior.

About this research paper

What this paper is about

This paper describes an executable formal semantics of C. Being executable, the semantics has been thoroughly tested against the GCC torture test suite and successfully passes 99.2% of 776 test programs. It is the most complete and thoroughly tested formal definition of C to date. The semantics yields an interpreter, debugger, state space search tool, and model checker "for free". The semantics is shown capable of automatically finding program errors, both statically and at runtime. It is also used to enumerate nondeterministic behavior.

Why it matters

OpenAlex reports 186 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

Key contribution

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Method / approach

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Main findings

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Limitations

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Available abstract

This paper describes an executable formal semantics of C. Being executable, the semantics has been thoroughly tested against the GCC torture test suite and successfully passes 99.2% of 776 test programs. It is the most complete and thoroughly tested formal definition of C to date. The semantics yields an interpreter, debugger, state space search tool, and model checker "for free". The semantics is shown capable of automatically finding program errors, both statically and at runtime. It is also used to enumerate nondeterministic behavior.

Key concepts: Programming language, Computer science, Executable, Debugger, Nondeterministic algorithm, Formal semantics (linguistics), Semantics (computer science), Test suite

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