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Automatic proofs of memory deallocation for a Whiley-to-C Compiler

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Abstract

This paper describes the design and verification of a copy elimination and memory deallocation scheme for a compiler that translates the verification-friendly programming language Whiley into efficient C code. We use a combination of static analysis and runtime flags to replace array copies with reference assignments when possible. Formal proofs have been carried out, both manually and with the automatic theorem prover Boogie, to show that the generated code satisfies a crucial invariant, which is needed to show the absence of invalid memory access errors and memory leaks. Our benchmark results show that the compiler effectively reduces the time complexity of LZ77 decompression from \(O(n^2)\) to the theoretically lowest possible level \(O(n\log n)\) while avoiding all memory leaks.

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Data availability statements

1. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [Github] repository, [https://github.com/samminweng/WhileyOpenCL]. 2. The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. 3. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. David J. Pearce and the Whiley team for their support, and Oracle Labs, Australia for travel funding. This work also greatly benefits from the useful feedback of the members of the Sydney Area Programming Languages INterest Group (SAPLING).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Min-Hsien Weng & Robi Malik

  2. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Mark Utting

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  1. Min-Hsien Weng
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  2. Robi Malik
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  3. Mark Utting
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Correspondence to Min-Hsien Weng.

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Weng, MH., Malik, R. & Utting, M. Automatic proofs of memory deallocation for a Whiley-to-C Compiler. Form Methods Syst Des 57, 429–472 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10703-021-00378-0

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