"Static analysis and the impact of the target architecture" by Paul Anderson was published today in VME and Critical Systems. An excerpt appears below, with a link to the full article.
Static analysis and the impact of the target architecture
By Paul Anderson
[...]
A new breed of static analysis tools has recently become available for finding serious programming flaws in software, and its use is rapidly becoming best practice. These tools work by performing an abstract execution of a model of the program, so they are most effective when that model is as accurate as possible. This means that they must take into account subtleties implied by the target architectures such as sizes of primitive types, data alignment, the treatment of bit fields, and others, in order to counteract the What You See Is Not What You eXecute (WYSINWYX) effect. Accordingly, a thorough understanding of how modern static analysis tools work is a critical foundation of the process.
[...]
See the article on the VME and Critical Systems website
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