LibStranger is an Automata-Based Symbolic String Analysis Library. You can use LibStranger to solve string constraints and/or compute pre and post-images of string manipulation operations such as concatenation and replacement. It can handle complex regular-expression based replace operations such as PHP's preg_replace and approximate these operations in the presence of unbounded loops with high precision and smooth performance. In addition, LibStranger provides fast and precise modeling for common string functions such as trim, substring, toUpperCase and toLowerCase and complex sanitization functions such as PHP's addslashes and htmlspecialchars. LibStranger stands for STRing AutomatoN GEneratoR Library.

LibStranger is a c library which means that you need to statically or dynamically link to it. This guide will assume that you have a c compiler installed on your machine such as gcc or clang. LibStranger also needs autotools to build it. To install these under Ubuntu Linux run the following:

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool

LibStranger has been also tested under Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks.

LibStranger depends on MONA library so you need to first download MONA, compile it and install it as following:

$> tar -xzvf mona-1.4-15.tar.gz
$> cd mona-1.4
$> ./configure
$> make
$> sudo make install
$> ls /usr/local/lib/libmona*
/usr/local/lib/libmonabdd.a         /usr/local/lib/libmonagta.a
/usr/local/lib/libmonabdd.la        /usr/local/lib/libmonagta.la
/usr/local/lib/libmonabdd.so        /usr/local/lib/libmonagta.so
/usr/local/lib/libmonabdd.so.1      /usr/local/lib/libmonagta.so.1
/usr/local/lib/libmonabdd.so.1.0.4  /usr/local/lib/libmonagta.so.1.0.4
/usr/local/lib/libmonadfa.a         /usr/local/lib/libmonamem.a
/usr/local/lib/libmonadfa.la        /usr/local/lib/libmonamem.la
/usr/local/lib/libmonadfa.so        /usr/local/lib/libmonamem.so
/usr/local/lib/libmonadfa.so.1      /usr/local/lib/libmonamem.so.1
/usr/local/lib/libmonadfa.so.1.0.4  /usr/local/lib/libmonamem.so.1.0.4
$> ls /usr/local/include/mona/
bdd.h     dfa.h       gnuc.h  mem.h
config.h  dlmalloc.h  gta.h

MONA will install four static/shared libraries under /usr/local/lib (by default). The four library are: monabdd, monadfa, mondagta and monaamem. MONA will also install a number of header files under /usr/local/include/mona (by default). These are not enough. Make sure you copy the header files bdd_external.h and bdd_dump.h to /usr/local/include/mona in addition to other MONA header files there.

$> cd mona-1.4
$> sudo cp BDD/bdd_external.h /usr/local/include/mona
$> sudo cp BDD/bdd_dump.h /usr/local/include/mona

After that, clone LibStranger to your machine (or download the automatic zip file provided by github)

$> mkdir LibStranger
$> cd LibStranger
$> git clone git@github.com:vlab-cs-ucsb/LibStranger.git .
$> ls
autogen.sh    COPYING      README.md  strangerlib.xcodeproj
configure.ac  makefile.am  src        testprogram
$> chmod u+x autogen.sh
$> ./autogen.sh
$> ls
aclocal.m4      build-aux    configure.ac  makefile.am  src
autogen.sh      config.h.in  COPYING       makefile.in  strangerlib.xcodeproj
autom4te.cache  configure    m4            README.md    testprogram

autogen.sh will create the GNU autotools files (i.e., configure script and makefiles) from the two manually written files, configure.ac and makefile.am. You need to have autoconf and automake installed on your machine.

Then we use the normal autotools installation system:

$> ./configure
$> make
$> sudo make install
$> ls /usr/local/lib/
libmonabdd.a         libmonadfa.so.1.0.4  libmonamem.so.1
libmonabdd.la        libmonagta.a         libmonamem.so.1.0.4
libmonabdd.so        libmonagta.la        libstranger.a
libmonabdd.so.1      libmonagta.so        libstranger.la
libmonabdd.so.1.0.4  libmonagta.so.1      libstranger.so
libmonadfa.a         libmonagta.so.1.0.4  libstranger.so.0
libmonadfa.la        libmonamem.a         libstranger.so.0.0.1
libmonadfa.so        libmonamem.la
libmonadfa.so.1      libmonamem.so
$> ls /usr/local/include/stranger
stranger.h
$> sudo ldconfig
# following is optional, see next paragraph
$> sudo cp src/stranger_lib_internal.h /usr/local/include/stranger/

The output of the compilation will be a dynamic library called libstranger.so (or libstranger.dylib on Mac OS X). The library will be installed by default under /usr/local/lib. It will also install the header file stranger.h under /usr/local/include/stranger. You need to include stranger.h in your program and link your program against LibStranger and MONA. If you need to get more involved with LibStranger you may need to include stranger_lib_internal.h and/or MONA header files.

You can compile & run the test file test.c that comes with LibStranger to test stranger library. Here is how to compile and run this program (see below to fix invariant violation):

$> cd testprogram
$> gcc test.c -o test -l monabdd -l monadfa -l monamem -l stranger
$> sudo ldconfig
$> ./test -t

You can compile & run the simple test program sample_analysis.c that comes with LibStranger to see how to use stranger library to analyze programs. Here is how to compile and run this program (see next to fix invariant violation):

$> cd testprogram
$> gcc sample_analysis.c -o sample_analysis -l monabdd -l monadfa -l monamem -l stranger
$> sudo ldconfig
$> ./sample_analysis

You may get a MONA invariant violation error message in make_basic.c with provided sample_analysis.c. This is the result of not having enough number of BDD variables. To fix this edit the following two lines (27, 28) in mona source file DFA/makebasic.c and recompile mona:

// These two constants are used to allocate some static buffers. 
// So they affect memory performance.
#define MAX_EXCEPTION 50   /* change this to 2000. You can use a number as large as 2^MAX_VARIABLES */
#define MAX_VARIABLES 10   /* change this to 40 for test.c to run. You can use any number you want. */

Read documentation in stranger.h to get an idea of LibStranger library interface and the different functions that can be called. You can look at sample_analysis.c for examples on how to use LibStranger to analyze C and PHP programs.