  Abstraction is a successful technique in software verification, and
interpolation on infeasible error paths is a successful approach to
automatically detect the right level of abstraction in counterexample-guided
abstraction refinement. Because the interpolants have a significant influence
on the quality of the abstraction, and thus, the effectiveness of the
verification, an algorithm for deriving the best possible interpolants is
desirable. We present an analysis-independent technique that makes it possible
to extract several alternative sequences of interpolants from one given
infeasible error path, if there are several reasons for infeasibility in the
error path. We take as input the given infeasible error path and apply a
slicing technique to obtain a set of error paths that are more abstract than
the original error path but still infeasible, each for a different reason. The
(more abstract) constraints of the new paths can be passed to a standard
interpolation engine, in order to obtain a set of interpolant sequences, one
for each new path. The analysis can then choose from this set of interpolant
sequences and select the most appropriate, instead of being bound to the single
interpolant sequence that the interpolation engine would normally return. For
example, we can select based on domain types of variables in the interpolants,
prefer to avoid loop counters, or compare with templates for potential loop
invariants, and thus control what kind of information occurs in the abstraction
of the program. We implemented the new algorithm in the open-source
verification framework CPAchecker and show that our proof-technique-independent
approach yields a significant improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency
of the verification process.
