Using Redundancies to Find Errors

gsbarnes writes "Two Stanford researchers (Dawson Engler and Yichen Xie) have written a paper (pdf) showing that seemingly harmless redundant code is frequently a sign of not so harmless errors. Examples of redundant code: assigning a variable to itself, or dead code (code that is never reached). Some of their examples are obvious errors, some of them subtle. All are taken from a version of the Linux kernel (presumably they have already reported the bugs they found). Two interesting lessons: Apparently harmless mistakes often indicate serious troubles, so run lint and pay attention to its output. Also, in addition to its obvious practical uses, Linux provides a huge open codebase useful for researchers investigating questions about software engineering."

Comments

Re:peace in the world

[zcat_NZ]

That's nice, but have you actually caught Osama yet? Dead -or- alive? How long's it been?

Perhaps you'd have better luck if more of the Americans in Afghanistan were actually looking for Osama and not building an oil pipeline.. or was that the real objective here all along?