4,665 research outputs found
Quadratic Word Equations with Length Constraints, Counter Systems, and Presburger Arithmetic with Divisibility
Word equations are a crucial element in the theoretical foundation of
constraint solving over strings, which have received a lot of attention in
recent years. A word equation relates two words over string variables and
constants. Its solution amounts to a function mapping variables to constant
strings that equate the left and right hand sides of the equation. While the
problem of solving word equations is decidable, the decidability of the problem
of solving a word equation with a length constraint (i.e., a constraint
relating the lengths of words in the word equation) has remained a
long-standing open problem. In this paper, we focus on the subclass of
quadratic word equations, i.e., in which each variable occurs at most twice. We
first show that the length abstractions of solutions to quadratic word
equations are in general not Presburger-definable. We then describe a class of
counter systems with Presburger transition relations which capture the length
abstraction of a quadratic word equation with regular constraints. We provide
an encoding of the effect of a simple loop of the counter systems in the theory
of existential Presburger Arithmetic with divisibility (PAD). Since PAD is
decidable, we get a decision procedure for quadratic words equations with
length constraints for which the associated counter system is \emph{flat}
(i.e., all nodes belong to at most one cycle). We show a decidability result
(in fact, also an NP algorithm with a PAD oracle) for a recently proposed
NP-complete fragment of word equations called regular-oriented word equations,
together with length constraints. Decidability holds when the constraints are
additionally extended with regular constraints with a 1-weak control structure.Comment: 18 page
(Un)Decidability Results for Word Equations with Length and Regular Expression Constraints
We prove several decidability and undecidability results for the
satisfiability and validity problems for languages that can express solutions
to word equations with length constraints. The atomic formulas over this
language are equality over string terms (word equations), linear inequality
over the length function (length constraints), and membership in regular sets.
These questions are important in logic, program analysis, and formal
verification. Variants of these questions have been studied for many decades by
mathematicians. More recently, practical satisfiability procedures (aka SMT
solvers) for these formulas have become increasingly important in the context
of security analysis for string-manipulating programs such as web applications.
We prove three main theorems. First, we give a new proof of undecidability
for the validity problem for the set of sentences written as a forall-exists
quantifier alternation applied to positive word equations. A corollary of this
undecidability result is that this set is undecidable even with sentences with
at most two occurrences of a string variable. Second, we consider Boolean
combinations of quantifier-free formulas constructed out of word equations and
length constraints. We show that if word equations can be converted to a solved
form, a form relevant in practice, then the satisfiability problem for Boolean
combinations of word equations and length constraints is decidable. Third, we
show that the satisfiability problem for quantifier-free formulas over word
equations in regular solved form, length constraints, and the membership
predicate over regular expressions is also decidable.Comment: Invited Paper at ADDCT Workshop 2013 (co-located with CADE 2013
Light On String Solving: Approaches to Efficiently and Correctly Solving String Constraints
Widespread use of string solvers in formal analysis of string-heavy programs has led to a growing demand for more efficient and reliable techniques which can be applied in this context, especially for real-world cases. Designing an algorithm for the (generally undecidable) satisfiability problem for systems of string constraints requires a thorough understanding of the structure of constraints present in the targeted cases. We target the aforementioned case in different perspectives: We present an algorithm which works by reformulating the satisfiability of bounded word equations as a reachability problem for non-deterministic finite automata. Secondly, we present a transformation-system-based technique to solving string constraints. Thirdly, we investigate benchmarks presented in the literature containing regular expression membership predicates and design a decission procedure for a PSPACE-complete sub-theory. Additionally, we introduce a new benchmarking framework for string solvers and use it to showcase the power of our algorithms via an extensive empirical evaluation over a diverse set of benchmarks
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