research-article

A formal C memory model supporting integer-pointer casts

Authors:

William Mansky,

Dmitri Garbuzov,

Steve Zdancewic,

Viktor VafeiadisAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '15: Proceedings of the 36th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 326 - 335

https://doi.org/10.1145/2737924.2738005

Published: 03 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

The ISO C standard does not specify the semantics of many valid programs that use non-portable idioms such as integer-pointer casts. Recent efforts at formal definitions and verified implementation of the C language inherit this feature. By adopting high-level abstract memory models, they validate common optimizations. On the other hand, this prevents reasoning about much low-level code relying on the behavior of common implementations, where formal verification has many applications. We present the first formal memory model that allows many common optimizations and fully supports operations on the representation of pointers. All arithmetic operations are well-defined for pointers that have been cast to integers. Crucially, our model is also simple to understand and program with. All our results are fully formalized in Coq.

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Cited By

Kim YCho MLee JKim JYoon TSong YHur C(2025)Archmage and CompCertCast: End-to-End Verification Supporting Integer-Pointer CastingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048819:POPL(1326-1354)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704881
Chappe NHenrio LZakowski YStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)Monadic Interpreters for Concurrent Memory ModelsProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705890(283-298)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705890
Zaliva VMemarian KCampbell BAlmeida RFilardo NStark ISewell PStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)A CHERI C Memory Model for Verified Temporal SafetyProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705878(112-126)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705878
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A formal C memory model supporting integer-pointer casts

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '15: Proceedings of the 36th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2015

630 pages

ISBN:9781450334686

DOI:10.1145/2737924

General Chair:
David Grove
IBM Research, USA
,
Program Chair:
Steve Blackburn
Australian National University, Australia

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 50, Issue 6
PLDI '15
June 2015
630 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/2813885
Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 03 June 2015

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MSIP / NRF
EC FP7
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PLDI '15

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SIGPLAN

PLDI '15: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 13 - 17, 2015

OR, Portland, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 406 of 2,067 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Kim YCho MLee JKim JYoon TSong YHur C(2025)Archmage and CompCertCast: End-to-End Verification Supporting Integer-Pointer CastingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048819:POPL(1326-1354)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704881
Chappe NHenrio LZakowski YStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)Monadic Interpreters for Concurrent Memory ModelsProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705890(283-298)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705890
Zaliva VMemarian KCampbell BAlmeida RFilardo NStark ISewell PStark KTimany ABlazy STabareau N(2025)A CHERI C Memory Model for Verified Temporal SafetyProceedings of the 14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs10.1145/3703595.3705878(112-126)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3703595.3705878
Beck CYoon IChen HZakowski YZdancewic S(2024)A Two-Phase Infinite/Finite Low-Level Memory Model: Reconciling Integer–Pointer Casts, Finite Space, and undef at the LLVM IR Level of AbstractionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746528:ICFP(789-817)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674652
Zhang LWang YWu JKoenig JShao Z(2024)Fully Composable and Adequate Verified Compilation with Direct Refinements between Open ModulesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329148:POPL(2160-2190)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
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Wu JWang YSun MXu XSong Y(2023)Towards a Framework for Developing Verified Assemblers for the ELF FormatProgramming Languages and Systems10.1007/978-981-99-8311-7_10(205-224)Online publication date: 26-Nov-2023
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Gäher LSammler MSpies SJung RDang HKrebbers RKang JDreyer D(2022)Simuliris: a separation logic framework for verifying concurrent program optimizationsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34986896:POPL(1-31)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498689
Lepigre RSammler MMemarian KKrebbers RDreyer DSewell P(2022)VIP: verifying real-world C idioms with integer-pointer castsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34986816:POPL(1-32)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498681
Zakowski YBeck CYoon IZaichuk IZaliva VZdancewic S(2021)Modular, compositional, and executable formal semantics for LLVM IRProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34735725:ICFP(1-30)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2021
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Abate CBlanco RCiobâcă ŞDurier AGarg DHriţcu CPatrignani MTanter ÉThibault J(2021)An Extended Account of Trace-relating Compiler Correctness and Secure CompilationACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/346086043:4(1-48)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2021
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