English

Horn Binary Serialization Analysis

Programming Languages 2016-07-18 v1

Abstract

A bit layout is a sequence of fields of certain bit lengths that specifies how to interpret a serial stream, e.g., the MP3 audio format. A layout with variable length fields needs to include meta-information to help the parser interpret unambiguously the rest of the stream; e.g. a field providing the length of a following variable length field. If no such information is available, then the layout is ambiguous. I present a linear-time algorithm to determine whether a layout is ambiguous or not by modelling the behaviour of a serial parser reading the stream as forward chaining reasoning on a collection of Horn clauses.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.04461,
  title  = {Horn Binary Serialization Analysis},
  author = {Gabriele Paganelli},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.04461},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

In Proceedings HCVS2016, arXiv:1607.04033

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:55:40.132Z