arXiv subjects

Bertrand Meyer

Publications and source records attributed to Bertrand Meyer.

63 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Stateful Testing: Finding More Errors in Code and Contracts

Automated random testing has shown to be an effective approach to finding faults but still faces a major unsolved issue: how to generate test inputs diverse enough to find many faults and find them quickly. Stateful testing, the automated testing technique introduced in this article, generates new test cases that improve an existing test suite. The generated test cases are designed to violate the dynamically inferred contracts (invariants) characterizing the existing test suite. As a consequence, they are in a good position to detect new errors, and also to improve the accuracy of the inferred contracts by discovering those that are unsound. Experiments on 13 data structure classes totalling over 28,000 lines of code demonstrate the effectiveness of stateful testing in improving over the results of long sessions of random testing: stateful testing found 68.4% new errors and improved the accuracy of automatically inferred contracts to over 99%, with just a 7% time overhead.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2011

Towards a Calculus of Object Programs

Verifying properties of object-oriented software requires a method for handling references in a simple and intuitive way, closely related to how O-O programmers reason about their programs. The method presented here, a Calculus of Object Programs, combines four components: compositional logic, a framework for describing program semantics and proving program properties; negative variables to address the specifics of O-O programming, in particular qualified calls; the alias calculus, which determines whether reference expressions can ever have the same value; and the calculus of object structures, a specification technique for the structures that arise during the execution of an object-oriented program. The article illustrates the Calculus by proving the standard algorithm for reversing a linked list.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2011

Verifying Eiffel Programs with Boogie

Static program verifiers such as Spec#, Dafny, jStar, and VeriFast define the state of the art in automated functional verification techniques. The next open challenges are to make verification tools usable even by programmers not fluent in formal techniques. This paper presents AutoProof, a verification tool that translates Eiffel programs to Boogie and uses the Boogie verifier to prove them. In an effort to be usable with real programs, AutoProof fully supports several advanced object-oriented features including polymorphism, inheritance, and function objects. AutoProof also adopts simple strategies to reduce the amount of annotations needed when verifying programs (e.g., frame conditions). The paper illustrates the main features of AutoProof's translation, including some whose implementation is underway, and demonstrates them with examples and a case study.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2011

Steps towards a theory and calculus of aliasing

A theory, graphical notation, mathematical calculus and implementation for finding whether two given expressions can, at execution time, denote references attached to the same object. Intended as the basis for a comprehensive solution to the "frame problem" and as a complement to, or even a replacement for, separation logic, shape analysis, ownership types and dynamic frames.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2010

A Comparative Study of the Usability of Two Object-oriented Concurrent Programming Languages

Concurrency has been rapidly gaining importance in general-purpose computing, caused by the recent turn towards multicore processing architectures. As a result, an increasing number of developers have to learn to write concurrent programs, a task that is known to be hard even for the expert. Language designers are therefore working on languages that promise to make concurrent programming "easier" than using traditional thread libraries. However, the claim that a new language is more usable than another cannot be supported by purely theoretical considerations, but calls for empirical studies. In this paper, we present the design of a study to compare concurrent programming languages with respect to comprehending and debugging existing programs and writing correct new programs. A critical challenge for such a study is avoiding the bias that might be introduced during the training phase and when interpreting participants' solutions. We address these issues by the use of self-study material and an evaluation scheme that exposes any subjective decisions of the corrector, or eliminates them altogether. We apply our design to a comparison of two object-oriented languages for concurrency, multithreaded Java and SCOOP (Simple Concurrent Object-Oriented Programming), in an academic setting. We obtain results in favor of SCOOP even though the study participants had previous training in Java Threads.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2010

Specifying Reusable Components

Reusable software components need expressive specifications. This paper outlines a rigorous foundation to model-based contracts, a method to equip classes with strong contracts that support accurate design, implementation, and formal verification of reusable components. Model-based contracts conservatively extend the classic Design by Contract with a notion of model, which underpins the precise definitions of such concepts as abstract equivalence and specification completeness. Experiments applying model-based contracts to libraries of data structures suggest that the method enables accurate specification of practical software.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2010

Inferring Loop Invariants using Postconditions

One of the obstacles in automatic program proving is to obtain suitable loop invariants. The invariant of a loop is a weakened form of its postcondition (the loop's goal, also known as its contract); the present work takes advantage of this observation by using the postcondition as the basis for invariant inference, using various heuristics such as "uncoupling" which prove useful in many important algorithms. Thanks to these heuristics, the technique is able to infer invariants for a large variety of loop examples. We present the theory behind the technique, its implementation (freely available for download and currently relying on Microsoft Research's Boogie tool), and the results obtained.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2008

Extreme lattices and vexillar designs

We define a notion of vexillar design for the flag variety in the spirit of the spherical designs introduced by Delsarte, Goethals and Seidel. For a finite subgroup of the orthogonal group, we explain how conditions on the group have the orbits of any flag under the group action be a design and point out why the minima of a lattice in the sense of the general Hermite constant forming a 4-design implies being extreme. The reasoning proves useful to show the extremality of many new expected examples ($E_8$, $\La_{24}$, Barnes-Wall lattices, Thompson-Smith lattice for instance) that were out of reach until now.

math.CO↗

arXiv2008

Generalised Hermite Constants, Voronoi Theory and Heights on Flag Varieties

This paper explores the study of the general Hermite constant associated to the general linear group and its irreducible representations, as defined by T. Watanabe. To that end, a height, which naturally applies to flag varieties, is built and notions of perfection and eutaxy characterising extremality are introduced. Finally we acquaint some relations (e.g. with Korkine--Zolotareff reduction), upper bounds and computation relative to these constants.

math.NT↗