A First-Order Language for Expressing Aliasing and Type Properties of Logic Programs

. In this paper we study a first-order language that allows to express and prove properties reagarding the sharing of variables between non-ground terms and their types. The class of true formulas is proven to be decidable through a procedure of elimination of quantifiers and the language, with its proof procedure, is shown to have interesting applications in validation and debugging of logic programs. An interesting parallel is pointed out between the language of aliasing properties and the first order theories of Boolean algebras. Keywords: Verification of logic programs, languages of specification, first-order logic. 1 Introduction In many approaches to the verification of properties of logic programs, a formal language is required that allows to express the properties of programs one is interested in. In the methods proposed in [13][1][12][16], an assertional language is assumed to verify properties of arguments of predicates of the programs. Some verification conditions are prov..