Im-C - A Memory-Safe C Interpreter Providing a Better Learning, Testing, and Debugging Experience

Abstract

While it is a highly flexible and efficient language, C programming can be annoying for beginners who have difficultly finding, debugging, or understanding errors - especially those related to memory manipulation. This paper describes an initial phase of Im-C, a project whose goal is to develop a number of related environments that progress from easy-to-understand "C-with-objects" to a safe environment for both testing and learning to write "real" C programs, bringing more fun to the programming experience. In the current phase an experimental C interpreter has been developed to provide a foundation for real-time validation of C program behavior. The interpreter identifies errors related to memory manipulation, pointer operations and array access, by storing all values as objects containing meta-data, while preserving the semantics expected by C programmers. We validate the effectiveness of our interpreter by comparing its ability to detect a range of both common and obscure errors against the two most popular and mature tools currently available.