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Out of the Loop No More: Online Abstract Debugging with Loop Stepping (Short Paper)

Authors João Alvim , Maarten Steevens , Christophe Scholliers

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Software and its engineering → Software testing and debugging
Keywords
  • Debugging
  • Abstract Interpretation

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Abstract

Traditional debugging makes it practically impossible to manually explore all execution paths, often leaving hypotheses insufficiently explored. Abstract debugging addresses this problem by safely over-approximating all program behaviours through a familiar stepping interface. However, existing approaches operate offline, pre-computing fixed loop summaries that developers cannot interactively refine or inspect at the individual iteration level.
In this paper, we propose online abstract debugging, which performs abstract interpretation on demand as the developer steps through the program. This novel architecture enables loop stepping: developers can step into a loop body for precise, iteration-specific states, or step-over to obtain a coarser summary. By interleaving analysis with execution, developers gain direct control over the cost-precision trade-off, computing high precision only where needed to settle a hypothesis. We instantiate this model for WebAssembly and present a prototype implementation, demonstrating that developers can effectively draw sound conclusions about complex, potentially non-terminating looping programs.

Cite As Get BibTex

João Alvim, Maarten Steevens, and Christophe Scholliers. Out of the Loop No More: Online Abstract Debugging with Loop Stepping (Short Paper). In 15th Symposium on Languages, Applications and Technologies (SLATE 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 144, pp. 20:1-20:10, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.SLATE.2026.20

Author Details

João Alvim
  • University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
Maarten Steevens
  • Ghent University, Belgium
Christophe Scholliers
  • Ghent University, Belgium

Funding

  • Steevens, Maarten: Funded by the Research Foundation Flanders, grant number 1SA6C26N.

Supplementary Materials

References

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