Stateful manifest contracts

Abstract

This paper studies hybrid contract verification for an imperative higher-order language based on a so-called manifest contract system. In manifest contract systems, contracts are part of static types and contract verification is hybrid in the sense that some contracts are statically verified, typically by subtyping, but others are dynamically by casts. It is, however, not trivial to extend existing manifest contract systems, which have been designed mostly for pure functional languages, to imperative features, mainly because of the lack of flow-sensitivity, which should be taken into account in verifying imperative programs statically.