PARALLEL DATA LAB 

PDL Abstract

The Set-Check-Use Methodology for Detecting Error Propagation Failures in I/O Routines

Workshop on Dependability Benchmarking in conjunction with The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN-2002. June 23rd-26th, 2002, Washington, D.C., USA.

Michael W. Bigrigg and Jacob J. Vos

Institute for Complex Engineered Systems
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/

A methodology is presented that will detect robustness failures in source code where I/O errors could occur and where there is no mechanism in place to handle the error. The details of the methodology are described showing how traditional compiler data flow analysis can be augmented to find structurally, within the application, code that can be used to perform error checking. In addition we describe how this code can be used to ensure the correctness of the I/O error checking.

FULL PAPER: pdf / ps