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.

中文翻译：

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通过谓词抽象自动进行指针程序的回归验证

回归验证是一种用形式验证补充回归测试的方法。目标是正式证明程序的两个版本以精确指定的方式表现相同或不同。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的回归验证自动化方法，该方法将两个相关的命令式指针程序的等价性降低到约束性 Horn 子句在未解释谓词上的等价性。随后，使用最先进的 SMT 求解器来求解子句。我们已经实现了这种方法，我们的实验表明，现在可以证明具有整数和指针算法的非平凡程序是等效的，而无需进一步的用户输入。