Program Analysis (an Appetizer) · HackerPapers discussions

Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 19:25:21 GMT

Galois connections are super useful for static program analysis. In particular, for abstract interpretation. A great intro book is [1]. [1] Program Analysis – An Appetizer. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.10086

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 01:06:16 GMT

The main strategy is to build sound but imperfect analyzers, i.e. analyzers that never raise false negatives but that may raise some false positives. See §1.6 in [1], a simplified version of the classic Principles of Program Analysis. Good analyzers are practical, rarely raising false positives for well-written programs. The Astreé analyzer reported zero false positives for the 1 MLOC fly-by-wire A380 code. Another complementary strategy is to avoid Turing-complete constructs as much as possible, i.e. use DSLs with restricted semantics. This way, advanced semantic properties such as…

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by i_don_t_know

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 10:06:18 GMT

See also chapter 6 of Program Analysis (an Appetizer) by Nielsen and Nielsen. Free PDF at https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.10086#

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:01:40 GMT

> "The Art of Prolog" and "The Craft of Prolog" were also two of the better programming books I have read in my life. IMHO, The Art of Prolog is along with Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming, Paradigms of AI Programming, and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs the canon of dynamically typed programming. The Craft of Prolog is also exceptional but has some chapters that are too specific to programming in old Prolog systems and thus outdated. Lots of Prolog ideas live in answer set programming and Datalog. The latter is fantastic to build state-of-the-art…

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 05:39:46 GMT

Abstract interpreters and static analyzers are really powerful and not that hard to implement, compared to the little competition we have in this space. I am surprised with the lack of startups in the area. It's just a bit of abstract algebra. With Datalog, the barrier of entry is pretty low: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.10086 I have personally implemented a few of the features provided by Astrée, e.g. array bounds check, using the ideas described in: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-03811-6

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:06:06 GMT

The top books in static analysis are by the Nielsons: * https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-03811-6 * https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.10086

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — HN submission

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 23:44:15 GMT

Program Analysis (An Appetizer)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 18:45:16 GMT

Wow, I never expected Nielson & Nielson to be mentioned here. It's one of my favorite books, I have referred to it in some of my past comments, and certainly the best static analysis textbook out there. I actually took several courses from the authors some years back, and implemented most of the book for a not-so-simple imperative language, including e.g. abstract interpretation for detecting out-of-bounds array accesses. The book is a bit advanced unless you are well seasoned in the basics of abstract algebra and interpreter / compiler construction. Most fellow students struggled a lot.…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — HN submission

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 23:11:22 GMT

Program Analysis (An Appetizer)

3 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — mentioned by nextos

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 01:37:22 GMT

There's some nice literature. I got into the field 15 years ago and there were practically no good textbooks. Things are way better now: https://avigad.github.io/formal_methods_in_education/ Nielson & Nielson have the standard textbook in static program analysis that is used everywhere. But it's quite unfriendly as it's written using abstract algebra. They've recently released two textbooks that are much gentler. Actually, I'd say they are easy going and fun but still retain all the mathematical rigor. They use program graphs, which are a bit less general but a lot easier to digest. They…

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Program Analysis (an Appetizer) — HN submission

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 23:11:04 GMT

Program Analysis: An Appetizer

3 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.