Fall-in C: a software tool for pitfall detection in C programs

Programming language C has a flexible structure, and its compiler generates compact and efficient object codes. However slight bugs (pitfall) which cannot be detected by the compiler may cause a serious error in C programs. We are developing a software tool Fall-in C to detect such pitfalls. The paper demonstrates the basic features of Fall-in C. In order to enable a programmer to correct the detected pitfalls immediately, Fall-in C is executed within GNU Emacs editor. Pitfalls in C programs are mainly ad hoc. Thus we prepare three pitfall detection methods for the extensibility of Fall-in C: regular expression searching, structural pattern matching and message analysis of external programs. The patterns for the first two methods can be easily added to Fall-in C. Furthermore the message analysis method can be used to integrate several C program checkers such as lint, check and cchk into Fall-in C