The semantics of C++ data types: Towards verifying low-level system components

In order to formally reason about low-level system programs one needs a semantics (for the programming language in question) that can deal with programs that are not statically type-correct. For system-level programs, the semantics must deal with such heretical constructs like casting integers to pointers and converting pointers between incompatible base types. In this paper we describe a formal semantics for the data types of the C++ programming language that is suitable for low-level programs in the above sense. This work is part of a semantics for a large subset of the C++ programming language developed in the VFiasco project. In the VFiasco project we aim at the verification of substantial properties of the Fiasco microkernel, which is written in C++.