Forward symbolic execution is a technique for program analysis that explores the execution paths of a program by maintaining a symbolic representation of the program state. Traditionally, applications of this technique have focused on symbolically representing only primitive data types, while more recent extensions have expanded to reference types. We demonstrate the ability to symbolically execute a commonly used library class, specifically a string, at an abstract level. By abstracting away the implementation details of strings using finite-state automata, symbolic execution can scale to more complex programs. This technique can be applied to programs which generate complicated strings, such as SQL database queries.

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract. Symbolic execution is a flexible and powerful, but computationally expensive technique to detect dynamic behaviors of a program. In this paper, we present a context-sensitive relevancy analysis algorithm based on weighted pushdown model checking, which pinpoints memory locations in the program where symbolic values can flow into. This information is then utilized by a code instrumenter to transform only relevant parts of the program with symbolic constructs, to help improve the efficiency of symbolic execution of Java programs. Our technique is evaluated on a generalized symbolic execution engine that is developed upon Java Path Finder with checking safety properties of Java applications. Our experiments indicate that this technique can effectively improve the performance of the symbolic execution engine with respect to the approach that blindly instruments the whole program.

No abstract