3,698 research outputs found
Fifty years of Hoare's Logic
We present a history of Hoare's logic.Comment: 79 pages. To appear in Formal Aspects of Computin
Recursive Program Optimization Through Inductive Synthesis Proof Transformation
The research described in this paper involved developing transformation techniques which increase the efficiency of the noriginal program, the source, by transforming its synthesis proof into one, the target, which yields a computationally more efficient algorithm. We describe a working proof transformation system which, by exploiting the duality between mathematical induction and recursion, employs the novel strategy of optimizing recursive programs by transforming inductive proofs. We compare and contrast this approach with the more traditional approaches to program transformation, and highlight the benefits of proof transformation with regards to search, correctness, automatability and generality
A Bi-Directional Refinement Algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions
The paper describes the refinement algorithm for the Calculus of
(Co)Inductive Constructions (CIC) implemented in the interactive theorem prover
Matita. The refinement algorithm is in charge of giving a meaning to the terms,
types and proof terms directly written by the user or generated by using
tactics, decision procedures or general automation. The terms are written in an
"external syntax" meant to be user friendly that allows omission of
information, untyped binders and a certain liberal use of user defined
sub-typing. The refiner modifies the terms to obtain related well typed terms
in the internal syntax understood by the kernel of the ITP. In particular, it
acts as a type inference algorithm when all the binders are untyped. The
proposed algorithm is bi-directional: given a term in external syntax and a
type expected for the term, it propagates as much typing information as
possible towards the leaves of the term. Traditional mono-directional
algorithms, instead, proceed in a bottom-up way by inferring the type of a
sub-term and comparing (unifying) it with the type expected by its context only
at the end. We propose some novel bi-directional rules for CIC that are
particularly effective. Among the benefits of bi-directionality we have better
error message reporting and better inference of dependent types. Moreover,
thanks to bi-directionality, the coercion system for sub-typing is more
effective and type inference generates simpler unification problems that are
more likely to be solved by the inherently incomplete higher order unification
algorithms implemented. Finally we introduce in the external syntax the notion
of vector of placeholders that enables to omit at once an arbitrary number of
arguments. Vectors of placeholders allow a trivial implementation of implicit
arguments and greatly simplify the implementation of primitive and simple
tactics
An Exercise in Invariant-based Programming with Interactive and Automatic Theorem Prover Support
Invariant-Based Programming (IBP) is a diagram-based correct-by-construction
programming methodology in which the program is structured around the
invariants, which are additionally formulated before the actual code. Socos is
a program construction and verification environment built specifically to
support IBP. The front-end to Socos is a graphical diagram editor, allowing the
programmer to construct invariant-based programs and check their correctness.
The back-end component of Socos, the program checker, computes the verification
conditions of the program and tries to prove them automatically. It uses the
theorem prover PVS and the SMT solver Yices to discharge as many of the
verification conditions as possible without user interaction. In this paper, we
first describe the Socos environment from a user and systems level perspective;
we then exemplify the IBP workflow by building a verified implementation of
heapsort in Socos. The case study highlights the role of both automatic and
interactive theorem proving in three sequential stages of the IBP workflow:
developing the background theory, formulating the program specification and
invariants, and proving the correctness of the final implementation.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453
Proofs of partial correctness for attribute grammars with applications to recursive procedures and logic programming
AbstractAn extension of the inductive assertion method allowing one to prove the partial correctness of an attribute grammar w.r.t. a specification is presented. It is complete in an abstract sense. It is also shown that the semantics of systems of recursive imperative procedures or of recursive applicative procedures computed with call-by-value or call-by-name can be expressed by an attribute grammar associating attributes with the nodes of the so-called trees of calls. Hence the proof methods for the partial correctness of attribute grammars can be applied to these recursive procedures. We show also how the proof method can be applied in logic programming
- ā¦