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Higher-order demand-driven symbolic evaluation

Authors:

Zachary Palmer,

Theodore Park,

Scott Smith, and

Shiwei WengAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 4, Issue ICFP

Article No.: 102, Pages 1 - 28

https://doi.org/10.1145/3408984

Published: 03 August 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

Symbolic backwards execution (SBE) is a useful variation on standard forward symbolic evaluation; it allows a symbolic evaluation to start anywhere in the program and proceed by executing in reverse to the program start. SBE brings goal-directed reasoning to symbolic evaluation and has proven effective in e.g. automated test generation for imperative languages.

In this paper we define DDSE, a novel SBE which operates on a functional as opposed to imperative language; furthermore, it is defined as a natural extension of a backwards-executing interpreter. We establish the soundness of DDSE and define a test generation algorithm for this toy language. We report on an initial reference implementation to confirm the correctness of the principles.

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References

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Zachary Palmer, Theodore Park, Scott Smith, and Shiwei Weng. 2020b. Higher-Order Demand-Driven Symbolic Evaluation: Supplementary Appendices. ACM Digital Library. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408984

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Cited By

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Smith SZhang R(2024)A Pure Demand Operational Semantics with Applications to Program AnalysisProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498528:OOPSLA1(1154-1180)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649852
Palmer ZPark TSmith SWeng S(2020)Higher-order demand-driven symbolic evaluationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34089844:ICFP(1-28)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3408984

Index Terms

Higher-order demand-driven symbolic evaluation
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Formal software verification
      2. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
2. Theory of computation
  1. Logic

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 4, Issue ICFP

August 2020

1070 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3415018

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 03 August 2020

Published in PACMPL Volume 4, Issue ICFP

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Artifacts Evaluated & Functional / v1.1

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Smith SZhang R(2024)A Pure Demand Operational Semantics with Applications to Program AnalysisProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36498528:OOPSLA1(1154-1180)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649852
Palmer ZPark TSmith SWeng S(2020)Higher-order demand-driven symbolic evaluationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/34089844:ICFP(1-28)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3408984

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Compiling symbolic execution with staging and algebraic effects

From definitional interpreter to symbolic executor

MultiSE: multi-path symbolic execution using value summaries

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