M-String Segmentation: A Refined Abstract Domain for String Analysis in C Programs

We present a refined segmentation abstract domain for the analysis of strings in the C programming language, properly extending the parametric segmentation approach to array representation introduced by P. Cousot et al. to the case of text values. In particular, we capture the so-called string of interest of an array of char, in order to distinguish well-formed string arrays. A concrete and abstract semantics of the main C header file string.h functions are worked out in full detail.