Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. Meyer conceived the language in 1985 with the goal of increasing the reliability of commercial software development; the first version becoming available in 1986. In 2005, Eiffel became an ISO-standardized language.
In computer science, static program analysis is the analysis of computer programs performed without executing them, in contrast with dynamic program analysis, which is performed on programs during their execution.
Design by contract (DbC), also known as contract programming, programming by contract and design-by-contract programming, is an approach for designing software.
In computer programming, a precondition is a condition or predicate that must always be true just prior to the execution of some section of code or before an operation in a formal specification.
In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, analysis, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design.
In computer programming, specifically when using the imperative programming paradigm, an assertion is a predicate connected to a point in the program, that always should evaluate to true at that point in code execution. Assertions can help a programmer read the code, help a compiler compile it, or help the program detect its own defects.
In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics. Formal verification is a key incentive for formal specification of systems, and is at the core of formal methods. It represents an important dimension of analysis and verification in electronic design automation and is one approach to software verification. The use of formal verification enables the highest Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL7) in the framework of common criteria for computer security certification.
In computer programming, specifically object-oriented programming, a class invariant is an invariant used for constraining objects of a class. Methods of the class should preserve the invariant. The class invariant constrains the state stored in the object.
ESC/Java, the "Extended Static Checker for Java," is a programming tool that attempts to find common run-time errors in Java programs at compile time. The underlying approach used in ESC/Java is referred to as extended static checking, which is a collective name referring to a range of techniques for statically checking the correctness of various program constraints. For example, that an integer variable is greater-than-zero, or lies between the bounds of an array. This technique was pioneered in ESC/Java and can be thought of as an extended form of type checking. Extended static checking usually involves the use of an automated theorem prover and, in ESC/Java, the Simplify theorem prover was used.
Predicate transformer semantics were introduced by Edsger Dijkstra in his seminal paper "Guarded commands, nondeterminacy and formal derivation of programs". They define the semantics of an imperative programming paradigm by assigning to each statement in this language a corresponding predicate transformer: a total function between two predicates on the state space of the statement. In this sense, predicate transformer semantics are a kind of denotational semantics. Actually, in guarded commands, Dijkstra uses only one kind of predicate transformer: the well-known weakest preconditions.
SystemVerilog, standardized as IEEE 1800, is a hardware description and hardware verification language used to model, design, simulate, test and implement electronic systems. SystemVerilog is based on Verilog and some extensions, and since 2008, Verilog is now part of the same IEEE standard. It is commonly used in the semiconductor and electronic design industry as an evolution of Verilog.
The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a specification language for Java programs, using Hoare style pre- and postconditions and invariants, that follows the design by contract paradigm. Specifications are written as Java annotation comments to the source files, which hence can be compiled with any Java compiler.
assert.h is a header file in the C standard library. It defines the C preprocessor macro assert and implements runtime assertion in C.
The KeY tool is used in formal verification of Java programs. It accepts specifications written in the Java Modeling Language to Java source files. These are transformed into theorems of dynamic logic and then compared against program semantics that are likewise defined in terms of dynamic logic. KeY is significantly powerful in that it supports both interactive and fully automated correctness proofs. Failed proof attempts can be used for a more efficient debugging or verification-based testing. There have been several extensions to KeY in order to apply it to the verification of C programs or hybrid systems. KeY is jointly developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany; Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany; and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden and is licensed under the GPL.
Frama-C stands for Framework for Modular Analysis of C programs. Frama-C is a set of interoperable program analyzers for C programs. Frama-C has been developed by the French Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives (CEA-List) and Inria. It has also received funding from the Core Infrastructure Initiative. Frama-C, as a static analyzer, inspects programs without executing them. Despite its name, the software is not related to the French project Framasoft.
Extended static checking (ESC) is a collective name in computer science for a range of techniques for statically checking the correctness of various program constraints. ESC can be thought of as an extended form of type checking. As with type checking, ESC is performed automatically at compile time. This distinguishes it from more general approaches to the formal verification of software, which typically rely on human-generated proofs. Furthermore, it promotes practicality over soundness, in that it aims to dramatically reduce the number of false positives at the cost of introducing some false negatives. ESC can identify a range of errors that are currently outside the scope of a type checker, including division by zero, array out of bounds, integer overflow and null dereferences.
Random testing is a black-box software testing technique where programs are tested by generating random, independent inputs. Results of the output are compared against software specifications to verify that the test output is pass or fail. In case of absence of specifications the exceptions of the language are used which means if an exception arises during test execution then it means there is a fault in the program, it is also used as a way to avoid biased testing.
Whiley is an experimental programming language that combines features from the functional and imperative paradigms, and supports formal specification through function preconditions, postconditions and loop invariants. The language uses flow-sensitive typing also known as "flow typing."
Dafny is an imperative and functional compiled language that compiles to other programming languages, such as C#, Java, JavaScript, Go and Python. It supports formal specification through preconditions, postconditions, loop invariants, loop variants, termination specifications and read/write framing specifications. The language combines ideas from the functional and imperative paradigms; it includes support for object-oriented programming. Features include generic classes, dynamic allocation, inductive datatypes and a variation of separation logic known as implicit dynamic frames for reasoning about side effects. Dafny was created by Rustan Leino at Microsoft Research after his previous work on developing ESC/Modula-3, ESC/Java, and Spec#.
