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Sound and Complete Invariant-Based Heap Encodings
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Computer Systems. Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Division of Computer Systems.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1522-6673
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Computer Systems. Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Division of Computer Systems. University of Regensburg, Germany.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2733-7098
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Computing Science. Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Division of Computer Systems.
2026 (English)In: Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, E-ISSN 2475-1421, Vol. 10, no OOPSLA1, p. 794-822, article id 120Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Verification of programs operating on heap-allocated data structures, for instance lists or trees, poses significant challenges due to the potentially unbounded size of such data structures. We present time-indexed heap invariants, a novel invariant-based heap encoding leveraging uninterpreted predicates and prophecy variables to reduce verification of heap-manipulating programs to verification of programs over integers only. Our encoding of heap is general and agnostic to specific data structures. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first heap invariant-based method that achieves both soundness and completeness. We provide formal proofs establishing the correctness of our encodings. Through an experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that time-indexed heap invariants significantly extend the capability of existing verification tools, allowing automatic verification of programs with heap that were previously out of reach for state-of-the-art tools.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2026. Vol. 10, no OOPSLA1, p. 794-822, article id 120
Keywords [en]
Software Verification, Heap Memory, Invariant-Based, Program Transformation, Horn Clauses, Time-Indexed Heap Invariants, Space Invariants
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-554455DOI: 10.1145/3798228ISI: 001785356800001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105037760971OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-554455DiVA, id: diva2:1951745
Conference
OOPSLA, Oakland, CA, USA, October, 2026
Part of project
Parametric Floating-Point Reasoning, Swedish Research CouncilMCSE: Model-Constructing Symbolic Execution for Web Security, Swedish Research CouncilAvailable from: 2025-04-13 Created: 2025-04-13 Last updated: 2026-06-29Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Transformations for Verifying Programs with Heap-Allocated Data Structures
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Transformations for Verifying Programs with Heap-Allocated Data Structures
2025 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Verifying programs that manipulate heap-allocated data structures is a long-standing challenge in software verification. This thesis summarises a series of five papers that advance the state of the art in automated verification of such programs through transformation-based approaches. The contributions include the development of a formal SMT-LIB theory of heaps to represent heap operations, the implementation of this theory in an automated verification tool for C programs, and novel invariant-based encodings that simplify reasoning about heap structures. The thesis further presents methods for automatically instrumenting programs to simplify verification tasks involving quantified properties and aggregations. All proposed techniques are fully automated and do not rely on user-provided annotations, enabling verification of heap-manipulating programs with quantified invariants that previously posed significant challenges to automated verification tools.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2025. p. 55
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology, ISSN 1651-6214 ; 2541
Keywords
program verification, formal verification, constrained horn clauses, heaps, heap-allocated data structures, theory of heaps, program transformation, formal methods, smt, smt-lib, program instrumentation
National Category
Computer Sciences
Research subject
Computer Science with specialization in Embedded Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-554456 (URN)978-91-513-2484-5 (ISBN)
Public defence
2025-06-05, Häggsalen, Ångströmlaboratoriet, Regementsvägen 10, Uppsala, 13:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2025-05-13 Created: 2025-04-15 Last updated: 2025-05-21

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fulltext(901 kB)58 downloads
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Esen, ZaferRümmer, PhilippWeber, Tjark

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Citation style
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