System and method for dynamic data-type checking

A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising:

• a specified computer program;
• a shadow array module for maintaining a shadow array, the shadow array having entries corresponding to respective memory locations used by the specified computer program, each entry of the shadow array indicating a data type of the corresponding respective memory location;
• and
• an interpreter module for executing the specified computer program including executing each of a plurality of instructions of the specified computer program, wherein execution of each instruction of a subset of the plurality of instructions includes:
• determining whether execution of the instruction is inconsistent with an entry of the shadow array and generating a report when execution of the instruction is determined to be inconsistent with the entry of the shadow array;
• executing the instruction;
• and
• updating the shadow array in accordance with execution of the instruction.

A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising:

• a program instrumenting module for adding dynamic checking instructions to a compiled program to generate an instrumented program, the dynamic checking instructions including instructions for establishing a shadow array, the shadow array having entries corresponding to respective memory locations used by the compiled program, each entry of the shadow array indicating a data type of the corresponding respective memory location;
• the compiled program including a plurality of instructions;
• wherein the dynamic checking instructions are configured so that during execution of instructions of the instrumented program, for each instruction of a subset of the plurality of instructions of the compiled program, the dynamic checking instructions:
• determine whether execution of the instruction of the compiled program is inconsistent with an entry of the shadow array and generate a report when execution of the instruction is determined to be inconsistent with the entry of the shadow array;
• and
• update the shadow array in accordance with execution of the instruction of the compiled program.