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Verify CStr CloneToUninit and Index<RangeFrom> safety (Challenge 13)#543

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jrey8343 wants to merge 3 commits intomodel-checking:mainfrom
jrey8343:challenge-13-cstr
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Verify CStr CloneToUninit and Index<RangeFrom> safety (Challenge 13)#543
jrey8343 wants to merge 3 commits intomodel-checking:mainfrom
jrey8343:challenge-13-cstr

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@jrey8343 jrey8343 commented Feb 8, 2026

Summary

  • Adds the final 2 verification harnesses to complete Challenge 13 (CStr safety)
  • check_clone_to_uninit: Verifies the unsafe CloneToUninit impl for CStr correctly copies all bytes including NUL terminator, with safety contract requiring non-null dest
  • check_index_from: Verifies ops::Index<RangeFrom<usize>> for CStr maintains the is_safe() invariant on the resulting sub-CStr

Changes

  • library/core/src/clone.rs: Added #[requires(!dest.is_null())] safety contract on CloneToUninit::clone_to_uninit for CStr, plus use crate::kani and use safety::requires imports
  • library/core/src/ffi/c_str.rs: Added check_clone_to_uninit and check_index_from harnesses in the existing mod verify block

Verification

Both harnesses pass with Kani 0.65.0:

  • check_clone_to_uninit (MAX_SIZE=16, unwind=17): ~159s
  • check_index_from (MAX_SIZE=32, unwind=33): ~189s

Resolves

Challenge 13: Safety of CStr (#150)

Test plan

  • check_clone_to_uninit passes Kani verification
  • check_index_from passes Kani verification
  • CI passes with all existing + new harnesses

Add the final 2 verification harnesses to complete Challenge 13:

- check_clone_to_uninit: Verifies the unsafe CloneToUninit impl for CStr
  correctly copies all bytes (including NUL terminator) and produces a
  valid CStr at the destination. Includes safety contract on
  clone_to_uninit requiring non-null dest pointer.

- check_index_from: Verifies ops::Index<RangeFrom<usize>> for CStr
  produces a valid CStr that maintains the safety invariant and
  matches the expected tail of the original bytes.

Both harnesses are bounded (MAX_SIZE=16/32) with appropriate unwind
limits and verify the CStr is_safe() invariant holds.
@jrey8343 jrey8343 requested a review from a team as a code owner February 8, 2026 02:28
The harness was timing out (10 min CBMC limit) due to expensive symbolic
pointer arithmetic in clone_to_uninit combined with a symbolic-length
verification loop. Fix: reduce MAX_SIZE from 16 to 8 bytes (sufficient
to cover empty, single-char, and multi-char C strings) and remove the
byte-by-byte verification loop (the CStr reconstruction check still
validates the safety invariant).
@jrey8343
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CI is passing — ready for review.

@feliperodri feliperodri added the Challenge Used to tag a challenge label Mar 9, 2026
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