C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C --> Computer | Coderz Club

C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C

--> Computer Science > Programming Languages arXiv:2504.02246 (cs) [Submitted on 3 Apr 2025] Title:C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C Authors:Yiyuan Cao, Jiayi Zhuang, Houjin Chen, Jinkai Fan, Wenbo Xu, Zhiyi Wang, Di Wang, Qinxiang Cao, Yingfei Xiong, Haiyan Zhao, Zhenjiang Hu View a PDF of the paper titled C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C, by Yiyuan Cao and 10 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Ensuring the correct functionality of systems software, given its safety-critical and low-level nature, is a primary focus in formal verification research and applications. Despite advances in verification tooling, conventional programmers are rarely involved in the verification of their own code, resulting in higher development and maintenance costs for verified software. A key barrier to programmer participation in verification practices is the disconnect of environments and paradigms between programming and verification practices, which limits accessibility and real-time verification. We introduce C*, a proof-integrated language design for C programming. C* extends C with verification capabilities, powered by a symbolic execution engine and an LCF-style proof kernel. It enables real-time verification by allowing programmers to embed proof-code blocks alongside implementation code, facilitating interactive updates to the current proof state. Its expressive and extensible proof support allows users to build reusable libraries of logical definitions, theorems, and programmable proof automation. Crucially, C* unifies implementation and proof code development by using C as the common language. We implemented a prototype of C* and evaluated it on a representative benchmark of small C programs and a challenging real-world case study: the attach function of pKVM s buddy allocator. Our results demonstrate that C* supports the verification of a broad subset of C programming idioms and effectively handles complex reasoning tasks in real-world scenarios. Subjects: Programming Languages (cs.PL); Software Engineering (cs.SE) Cite as: arXiv:2504.02246 [cs.PL] (or arXiv:2504.02246v1 [cs.PL] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.02246 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Yiyuan Cao [view email] [v1] Thu, 3 Apr 2025 03:22:22 UTC (414 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled C*: Unifying Programming and Verification in C, by Yiyuan Cao and 10 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: cs.PL < prev | next > new | recent | 2025-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.SE References & Citations NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)