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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Programming.2025.12

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

Authors: Masaki Kunii and Ian Piumarta

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 134, Companion Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming 2025)

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.

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Masaki Kunii and Ian Piumarta. Im-C - A Memory-Safe C Interpreter Providing a Better Learning, Testing, and Debugging Experience. In Companion Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 134, pp. 12:1-12:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{kunii_et_al:OASIcs.Programming.2025.12,
  author =	{Kunii, Masaki and Piumarta, Ian},
  title =	{{Im-C - A Memory-Safe C Interpreter Providing a Better Learning, Testing, and Debugging Experience}},
  booktitle =	{Companion Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming 2025)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:18},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-382-9},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{134},
  editor =	{Edwards, Jonathan and Perera, Roly and Petricek, Tomas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Programming.2025.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-242968},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Programming.2025.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: C programming Language, debugging Tools, memory Safety}
}

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

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