Assertion-based Repair of Complex Data Structures

Google Tech Talks June 29th, 2007 ABSTRACT Data structure corruptions are insidious bugs that reduce the reliability of software systems. Programmers have long used assertions to characterize data structure properties. An assertion violation signals a corruption in the program state. At such a state, it is standard to terminate the program, debug it if possible, and re-execute it. This talk will discuss a new view: instead of terminating the program, use the violated assertion as a basis of repairing the state of the program and let it continue. The talk will present a novel algorithm to repair structurally complex data. Given a structure that violates an assertion that represents its...