14,015 research outputs found
Featherweight VeriFast
VeriFast is a leading research prototype tool for the sound modular
verification of safety and correctness properties of single-threaded and
multithreaded C and Java programs. It has been used as a vehicle for
exploration and validation of novel program verification techniques and for
industrial case studies; it has served well at a number of program verification
competitions; and it has been used for teaching by multiple teachers
independent of the authors. However, until now, while VeriFast's operation has
been described informally in a number of publications, and specific
verification techniques have been formalized, a clear and precise exposition of
how VeriFast works has not yet appeared. In this article we present for the
first time a formal definition and soundness proof of a core subset of the
VeriFast program verification approach. The exposition aims to be both
accessible and rigorous: the text is based on lecture notes for a graduate
course on program verification, and it is backed by an executable
machine-readable definition and machine-checked soundness proof in Coq
Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: from conceptual exploration to distinct ways of experimenting
Now that complex Agent-Based Models and computer simulations
spread over economics and social sciences - as in most sciences of complex
systems -, epistemological puzzles (re)emerge. We introduce new
epistemological tools so as to show to what precise extent each author is right
when he focuses on some empirical, instrumental or conceptual significance of
his model or simulation. By distinguishing between models and simulations,
between types of models, between types of computer simulations and between
types of empiricity, section 2 gives conceptual tools to explain the rationale of
the diverse epistemological positions presented in section 1. Finally, we claim
that a careful attention to the real multiplicity of denotational powers of
symbols at stake and then to the implicit routes of references operated by
models and computer simulations is necessary to determine, in each case, the
proper epistemic status and credibility of a given model and/or simulation
- …