Daikon is an implementation of dynamic detection of likely invariants. An invariant is a property (such as "x=2*y+5" or "this.next.prev = this" or "myarray is sorted by <") that holds at a certain point or points in a program. Invariants are often seen in assert statements, documentation, and formal specifications. Invariants can be useful in program understanding and a host of other applications. Daikon runs a program, observes the values that the program computes, and then reports properties that were true over the observed executions. It can detect properties in Java, C, C++, Perl, and IOA programs, in spreadsheet files, and in other data sources.
