Science of Computer Programming最新文献

{"title":"Enhancing automated loop invariant generation for complex programs with large language models","authors":"Ruibang Liu,&nbsp;Minyu Chen,&nbsp;Ling-I Wu,&nbsp;Jingyu Ke,&nbsp;Guoqiang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103387","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103387","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Automated program verification has always been an important component of building trustworthy software. While the analysis of loops remains a theoretical challenge, the automation of loop invariant analysis has effectively resolved the problem. However, existing invariant generation tools are predominantly effective for programs with purely numerical or purely pointer-based structures. Real-world programs often mix complex data structures and control flows. These structures can include arrays, pointers, and recursive definitions, while control flows may involve multiple nested or concurrent loops. Traditional methods generally only generate invariants for simple numerical programs or specific segments, lacking broad applicability. In order to automatically generate loop invariants for real-world programs, we proposed <em>ACInv</em>, an Automated Complex program loop Invariant generation tool, which combines static analysis with prompting with Large Language Models (LLM) to generate the proper loop invariants. We employ static analysis to systematically decompose the program's data structures and loops. This involves layer-by-layer transmission of structural information about variables, numerical data, and the complete loop structure to the LLM, enabling the generation of corresponding invariants. In comparison to prior work on AutoSpec, we delve deeper into the variable information within each loop. We conducted experiments on ACInv, which showed that ACInv outperformed previous tools on data sets with data structures and maintained similar performance to the state-of-the-art tool AutoSpec on numerical programs without data structures. For the total data set, ACInv can solve 21% more examples than AutoSpec, and can generate reference data structure templates.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103387"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144922168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enhancing decision-making for software architects: selecting appropriate architectural patterns based on quality attribute requirements","authors":"Maryam Gholami ,&nbsp;Jafar Habibi ,&nbsp;Maziar Goudarzi","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103383","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103383","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Decision-making in software architecture is complex and requires expertise across domains. A key challenge is balancing software quality attributes. Architectural patterns, as knowledge repositories, offer solutions to recurring design problems. Thus, a structured approach to selecting patterns based on quality requirements is essential.</div><div>This paper presents an approach to improve decision-making in selecting architectural patterns concerning software quality attributes. Our method helps architects choose suitable patterns to achieve desired quality outcomes. For new or evolving systems, it recommends patterns aligned with target attributes, while for existing systems, it suggests improvements to enhance architecture.</div><div>We use Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) to achieve this goal. Eight architectural patterns were selected as cases, and relevant features were identified using the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT), with feature extraction performed by five experts. By computing similarity between RGT vectors and CBR cases, our method predicts the most appropriate pattern. The proposed approach achieves 83 % accuracy, demonstrating its effectiveness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103383"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144895138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Type soundness of functional languages with subtyping in Lang-n-Prove","authors":"Matteo Cimini,&nbsp;Joan Montas","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103380","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103380","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Language verification is an important aspect in the cycle of programming language development, especially when such endeavor establishes properties of programming languages with mathematical proofs. Prior work proposed <figure><img></figure>, which is a domain-specific language for expressing language-parameterized proofs, that is, proofs that apply to classes of languages rather than a single language. Such work developed the language-parameterized proofs of type soundness (excluding the substitution lemmas) for a certain class of functional languages. In this paper, we extend that work to include subtyping. We have added new operations to <figure><img></figure> for expressing the proofs that are related to subtyping more naturally. We provide a semantics of our new system based on a compilation into proofs of the Abella proof assistant. Next, we develop language-parameterized proofs of type soundness (excluding the substitution lemmas) for the class of functional languages mentioned above, and of the equivalence between algorithmic and declarative subtyping. Our extended <figure><img></figure> generates Abella proofs that machine-check the type soundness of a nontrivial class of functional languages with declarative and algorithmic subtyping, when just a few simple lemmas are admitted.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103380"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144867123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Metric information mining with metric attention to boost software defect prediction performance","authors":"Yongchang Ding ,&nbsp;Wei Han ,&nbsp;Zhiqiang Li ,&nbsp;Haowen Chen ,&nbsp;Linjun Chen ,&nbsp;Rong Peng ,&nbsp;Xiao-Yuan Jing","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103381","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103381","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the field of software engineering, defect prediction has always been a popular research direction. Currently, the research on traditional software defect prediction mainly focuses on metric features, which are derived from various descriptive rules. Many researchers have proposed a large number of defect prediction models based on these metric features and various framework models. However, the problem of data scarcity has severely hindered the development of the field. Therefore, this work proposes a new method, namely the Metric Attention Module (MAM), which excavates the correlations within the metric data features, between features, within modules, and between modules. By learning new data representations, MAM guides the model's learning process and ultimately improves the model's performance without changing the network framework structure. Additionally, the method is interpretable.</div><div>In this work, experiments were conducted in various task environments and on different datasets, all resulting in varying degrees of improvement. In the context of within-project defect prediction (WPDP), experiments with the MAM data model showed an average improvement of 14.7% in Accuracy, 15.9% in F1 score, 23.7% in AUC, and 65.1% in MCC. In cross-project defect prediction (CPDP), under more complex task environments, the model demonstrated excellent performance across multiple standard datasets. Compared to the baseline models and training results, the F1, Accuracy, and MCC scores improved by approximately 40%, 20%, and 50%, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103381"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144861269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exact and sufficient schedulability tests for adaptive weakly-hard real-time mixed-criticality systems","authors":"Hossein Rabbiun ,&nbsp;Mahmoud Shirazi ,&nbsp;Jamal Mohammadi","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103382","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103382","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper presents enhanced schedulability analysis techniques for Adaptive Mixed-Criticality systems with Weakly-Hard constraints (AMC-WH), where the low-criticality (LO) task jobs can continue to execute when the system switches to high-criticality (HI) mode. Prior AMC-WH studies typically adopt the skip-over model, in which up to <em>s</em> out of <em>m</em> consecutive LO task deadlines may be missed without violating system constraints. These approaches evaluate the Worst-Case Response Times (WCRT) of LO tasks under a fixed job execution pattern. In contrast, this work introduces a novel schedulability analysis framework based on the more general <span><math><mo>(</mo><mi>m</mi><mo>,</mo><mi>k</mi><mo>)</mo></math></span>-firm model, where each LO task must meet at least <em>m</em> out of any <em>k</em> consecutive deadlines. This extension allows for more flexible and configurable execution patterns for LO tasks after a mode transition, improving the adaptability of the system to varying operational conditions. Additionally, we propose an exact schedulability test for AMC-WH based on Response Time Analysis (RTA), which incorporates the <span><math><mo>(</mo><mi>m</mi><mo>,</mo><mi>k</mi><mo>)</mo></math></span>-firm model to precisely analyze schedulability by dynamically managing LO task execution patterns post-mode switch. Comprehensive experimental evaluations confirm the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed tests. In particular, our approach achieves an 18% improvement in schedulability compared to the AMC-WH skip-over baseline, while also optimizing resource utilization. By leveraging the flexibility of the <span><math><mo>(</mo><mi>m</mi><mo>,</mo><mi>k</mi><mo>)</mo></math></span>-firm model, our method supports a wide range of real-time applications with diverse tolerance levels for deadline misses, offering enhanced adaptability in LO task execution strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103382"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An ML-style module system for cross-stage type abstraction in multi-stage programming","authors":"Takashi Suwa ,&nbsp;Atsushi Igarashi","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103379","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103379","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose <em>MetaFM</em>, a novel ML-style module system that enables users to decompose <em>multi-stage programs</em> (i.e., programs written in a typed <em>multi-stage programming</em> language) into loosely coupled components in a manner natural with respect to type abstraction. The distinctive aspect of MetaFM is that it allows values at different stages to be bound in a single structure (i.e., <span><math><mrow><mi>struct</mi></mrow><mspace></mspace><mo>⋯</mo><mspace></mspace><mrow><mi>end</mi></mrow></math></span>). This feature is crucial, for example, for defining a function and a macro that use one abstract type in common without revealing the implementation detail of that type. MetaFM also accommodates staging with full-fledged module-related features such as <em>functors</em>, <em>higher-kinded types</em>, and the <strong>with type</strong><em>-construct</em>. We give two separate formalizations of MetaFM's semantics by employing the technique of <em>elaborations</em>, i.e., type-directed translations to target languages. Specifically, we first define <em>F-ing Modules</em>-based semantics as a set of elaboration rules that convert MetaFM programs into <em>System F</em><span><math><msup><mrow><mi>ω</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>〈</mo><mo>〉</mo></mrow></msup></math></span>, a multi-stage extension of System F<em>ω</em>, and prove that the elaboration preserves typing. The existential quantification offered by System F<span><math><msup><mrow><mi>ω</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>〈</mo><mo>〉</mo></mrow></msup></math></span> demonstrates that a type abstraction mechanism is properly formalized in our language. Then, because our F-ing Modules-based semantics of staging has some issues as to the evaluation order, we give another elaboration by utilizing a method called <em>static interpretation</em>, which flattens nested structures into arrays of bindings and inlines functor applications through type-checking. While our F-ing Modules-based semantics cannot be naturally extended with effectful computations, the static interpretation-based one can easily accommodate effectful features such as mutable references, though this is achieved with the limitation that functors must be first-order for the moment. As a sideline, we develop a technique that simplifies the correctness proof of the static interpretation for first-order functors. Additionally, our language supports <em>cross-stage persistence</em> (<em>CSP</em>), a feature for code reuse spanning more than one stage, without breaking type safety. We also implemented a module system for a language of real-world use based on the latter semantics to demonstrate the utility of our formalization.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103379"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144830041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A programming framework for distributed computing continuum systems","authors":"Zhehao Zhao,&nbsp;Yifeng Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103366","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103366","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Distributed Computing Continuum Systems (DCCS) integrate a large-scale cloud side and a wide-area heterogeneous edge side within the same network environment and is therefore a more general computing paradigm than cloud or edge computing. There are currently no programming technologies suitable for the support of DCCS application development. In this paper, we introduce a programming framework called <span>Wolfs</span>, which uses only basic programming constructs from programming-language theories. The framework is communication-centric in the sense that high-level communication models and lower-level communication protocols are organised in a hierarchy. Data-processing computations are inserted in the hierarchy as actions. This design allows application-level information to influence network routing and connection management. <span>Wolfs</span> programming is demonstrated in two case studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103366"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144723776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Optimization of Farkas' Lemma-based linear invariant generation using divide-and-conquer with pruning","authors":"Ruibang Liu,&nbsp;Hongming Liu,&nbsp;Guoqiang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103361","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103361","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Formal verification plays a critical role in contemporary computer science, offering mathematically rigorous methods to ensure the correctness, reliability, and security of programs. Loops, due to their complexity and uncertainty, have become a major challenge in program verification. Loop invariants are often employed to abstract the properties of loops within a program, making the automatic generation of such invariants a pivotal challenge. Among the various methods, template-based frameworks grounded in Farkas' Lemma are recognized for their effectiveness in generating tight invariants in the realm of constraint solving. Recent advances have identified the conversion from conjunctive normal form (CNF) to disjunctive normal form (DNF) as a major bottleneck, leading to a combinatorial explosion. In this study, we introduce an optimized algorithm to address the combinatorial explosion by trading off space for time efficiency. Our approach employs two key strategies, divide-and-conquer, and pruning, to boost speed. First, we apply a divide-and-conquer strategy to decompose a complex problem into smaller, more manageable subproblems that can be solved quickly and in parallel. Second, we intelligently apply a pruning strategy, navigating the depth-first search process to avoid unnecessary checks. These improvements maintain the accuracy and speed up the analysis. We constructed a small dataset to showcase the superiority of our tool, which achieved an average speedup of 9.27x on this dataset. The experiments demonstrate that our method provides significant acceleration while maintaining accuracy and indicate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"247 ","pages":"Article 103361"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144656371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intrathread method orders based adaptive testing of concurrent objects","authors":"Yibo Dai ,&nbsp;Li Xie ,&nbsp;Peng Wu ,&nbsp;Shecheng Cui ,&nbsp;Linhai Ma","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103362","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103362","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Concurrent data structures or classes are designed to provide safe accesses and simultaneous updates by multiple threads to shared objects in a concurrent environment, with the goal of enhancing parallelism and throughput. However, testing concurrent objects poses significant challenges due to the potential explosion of concurrency test spaces, the variety of programming vulnerabilities, and the inherent nondeterminism of concurrent test executions. In this paper, we propose an Intrathread Method Orders based Adaptive Concurrency Testing (IMOACT) framework for concurrent objects. IMOACT can capture diverse behaviors of interthread method pairs through characterizing concurrent execution contexts with intrathread method orders. Moreover, IMOACT can adaptively optimize concurrent test executions by generating scheduling sequences based on the key scheduling points visited so far, streamlining test generation and execution organically across multiple tests. Experimental case studies with typical C/C++ concurrent classes demonstrate that IMOACT outperforms baseline approaches. On average, IMOACT promotes the effectiveness of detecting concurrency bugs by 65%, and achieves a speedup of 2.43x compared to the underlying state-of-the-art concurrency testing approach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103362"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144663008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Grits: A message-passing programming language based on the semi-axiomatic sequent calculus","authors":"Adrian Francalanza ,&nbsp;Gerard Tabone ,&nbsp;Frank Pfenning","doi":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103360","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.scico.2025.103360","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper introduces <span>Grits</span>, a channel-based message-passing concurrent language based on the semi-axiomatic sequent calculus, a logical foundation underpinning intuitionistic session types. The language leverages modalities from adjoint logic to express a number of programming idioms such as broadcast communication and message cancellation. The <span>Grits</span> interpreter is developed using Go, and consists primarily of two components: a type-checker and an evaluator.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49561,"journal":{"name":"Science of Computer Programming","volume":"248 ","pages":"Article 103360"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144685667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}