Game AI Pro 3

42

Building Custom Static Checkers Using Declarative Programming

Ian Horswill, Robert Zubek, and Matthew Viglione

42.1    Introduction

42.2    A Very Brief Introduction to Prolog

42.3    Writing a Static Checker

42.4    Common Problems to Check

42.5    Case Studies

42.6    Conclusion

References

42.1  Introduction

Programmers have developed a wide range of tools for sanity checking their code. Compilers perform type checking and generate warnings about undefined or unused variables. Programs such as Microsoft’s FxCop can detect opportunities for optimization, likely bugs such as files that are opened but never closed, and the use of unlocalized strings. These are all examples of static checking, as opposed to dynamic checks (such as assertions) ...