CASP: An evaluation dataset for formal verification of C code

TL;DR

This paper introduces CASP, a curated dataset of 506 verified C code and formal specifications in ACSL, designed to benchmark formal verification tools and improve automated code correctness in C programming.

Contribution

The paper presents the first systematic dataset of verified C code with formal specifications, created through multi-stage filtering, annotation, and manual verification, enabling benchmarking of formal verification methods.

Findings

Created a dataset of 506 verified C-ACSL pairs

Employs multi-stage filtering and manual verification

Facilitates benchmarking of formal verification tools

Abstract

Recent developments in Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in automating code generation, yet the generated programs lack rigorous correctness guarantees. Formal verification can address this shortcoming, but requires expertise and is time-consuming to apply. Currently, there is no dataset of verified C code paired with formal specifications that enables systematic benchmarking in this space. To fill this gap, we present a curated evaluation dataset of C code paired with formal specifications written in ANSI/ISO C Specification Language (ACSL). We develop a multi-stage filtering process to carefully extract 506 pairs of C code and formal specifications from The Stack 1 and The Stack 2. We first identify C files annotated with formal languages. Then, we ensure that the annotated C files formally verify, and employ LLMs to improve non-verifying files. Furthermore, we post-process the remaining files into pairs of C code and ACSL specifications, where each specification-implementation pair is formally verified using Frama-C. To ensure the quality of the pairs, a manual inspection is conducted to confirm the correctness of every pair. The resulting dataset of C-ACSL specification pairs (CASP) provides a foundation for benchmarking and further research on integrating automated code generation with verified correctness.