Finding stale‐value errors in concurrent programs

Abstract

Abstract Concurrent programs can suffer from many types of errors, not just the well‐studied problems of deadlocks and simple race conditions on variables. This paper addresses a kind of race condition that arises from reading a variable whose value is possibly out of date. The paper introduces a simple technique for detecting such stale values, and reports on the encouraging experience with a compile‐time checker that uses the technique. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.