Synthesizing contracts correct modulo a test generator

Abstract

We present an approach to learn contracts for object-oriented programs where guarantees of correctness of the contracts are made with respect to a test generator. Our contract synthesis approach is based on a novel notion of tight contracts and an online learning algorithm that works in tandem with a test generator to synthesize tight contracts. We implement our approach in a tool called Precis and evaluate it on a suite of programs written in C#, studying the safety and strength of the synthesized contracts, and compare them to those synthesized by Daikon.