Automating regression verification of pointer programs by predicate abstraction

Regression verification is an approach complementing regression testing with formal verification. The goal is to formally prove that two versions of a program behave either equally or differently in a precisely specified way. In this paper, we present a novel automated approach for regression verification that reduces the equivalence of two related imperative pointer programs to constrained Horn clauses over uninterpreted predicates. Subsequently, state-of-the-art SMT solvers are used to solve the clauses. We have implemented the approach, and our experiments show that non-trivial programs with integer and pointer arithmetic can now be proved equivalent without further user input.

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