Detecting races in relay ladder logic programs

DOI10.1007/PL00010810MaRDI QIDQ1856156zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Manuel Fähndrich, Zhendong Su, Alexander M. Aiken

Publication date 2000

Published in International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer. STTT (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/pl00010810

zbMATH Keywords

constraintssoftwarestatic analysistestingverification

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Theory of programming languages (68N15)

Review text

Relay Ladder Logic (RLL) is a programming language widely used for complex embedded control applications such as manufacturing and amusement park rides. The cost of bugs in RLL programs is extremely high, often measured in millions of dollars (for shutting down a factory) or human safety (for rides). In the paper, we describe our experience in applying constraint-based program analysis techniques to analyze production RLL programs. Our approach is an interesting combination of probabilistic testing and program analysis, and we show that our system is able to detect bugs with high probability, up to the approximations made by the conservative program analysis. We demonstrate that our analysis is useful in detecting some flaws in production RLL programs that are difficult to find by other techniques.

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Cited in

(1)

• Observation of software for distributed systems with RCL

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