An analysis of the equational properties of the well-founded fixed point

Well-founded fixed points have been used in several areas of knowledge representation and reasoning and to give semantics to logic programs involving negation. They are an important ingredient of approximation fixed point theory. We study the logical properties of the (parametric) well-founded fixed point operation. We show that the operation satisfies several, but not all of the equational properties of fixed point operations described by the axioms of iteration theories

Kleene algebra with domain

We propose Kleene algebra with domain (KAD), an extension of Kleene algebra with two equational axioms for a domain and a codomain operation, respectively. KAD considerably augments the expressiveness of Kleene algebra, in particular for the specification and analysis of state transition systems. We develop the basic calculus, discuss some related theories and present the most important models of KAD. We demonstrate applicability by two examples: First, an algebraic reconstruction of Noethericity and well-foundedness; second, an algebraic reconstruction of propositional Hoare logic.Comment: 40 page

Canonized Rewriting and Ground AC Completion Modulo Shostak Theories : Design and Implementation

AC-completion efficiently handles equality modulo associative and commutative function symbols. When the input is ground, the procedure terminates and provides a decision algorithm for the word problem. In this paper, we present a modular extension of ground AC-completion for deciding formulas in the combination of the theory of equality with user-defined AC symbols, uninterpreted symbols and an arbitrary signature disjoint Shostak theory X. Our algorithm, called AC(X), is obtained by augmenting in a modular way ground AC-completion with the canonizer and solver present for the theory X. This integration rests on canonized rewriting, a new relation reminiscent to normalized rewriting, which integrates canonizers in rewriting steps. AC(X) is proved sound, complete and terminating, and is implemented to extend the core of the Alt-Ergo theorem prover.Comment: 30 pages, full version of the paper TACAS'11 paper "Canonized Rewriting and Ground AC-Completion Modulo Shostak Theories" accepted for publication by LMCS (Logical Methods in Computer Science

Termination of rewrite relations on λ\lambda-terms based on Girard's notion of reducibility

In this paper, we show how to extend the notion of reducibility introduced by Girard for proving the termination of $\beta$-reduction in the polymorphic $\lambda$-calculus, to prove the termination of various kinds of rewrite relations on $\lambda$-terms, including rewriting modulo some equational theory and rewriting with matching modulo $\beta$$\eta$, by using the notion of computability closure. This provides a powerful termination criterion for various higher-order rewriting frameworks, including Klop's Combinatory Reductions Systems with simple types and Nipkow's Higher-order Rewrite Systems

Finitary Deduction Systems

Cryptographic protocols are the cornerstone of security in distributed systems. The formal analysis of their properties is accordingly one of the focus points of the security community, and is usually split among two groups. In the first group, one focuses on trace-based security properties such as confidentiality and authentication, and provides decision procedures for the existence of attacks for an on-line attackers. In the second group, one focuses on equivalence properties such as privacy and guessing attacks, and provides decision procedures for the existence of attacks for an offline attacker. In all cases the attacker is modeled by a deduction system in which his possible actions are expressed. We present in this paper a notion of finitary deduction systems that aims at relating both approaches. We prove that for such deduction systems, deciding equivalence properties for on-line attackers can be reduced to deciding reachability properties in the same setting.Comment: 30 pages. Work begun while in the CASSIS Project, INRIA Nancy Grand Es

Set Unification

The unification problem in algebras capable of describing sets has been tackled, directly or indirectly, by many researchers and it finds important applications in various research areas--e.g., deductive databases, theorem proving, static analysis, rapid software prototyping. The various solutions proposed are spread across a large literature. In this paper we provide a uniform presentation of unification of sets, formalizing it at the level of set theory. We address the problem of deciding existence of solutions at an abstract level. This provides also the ability to classify different types of set unification problems. Unification algorithms are uniformly proposed to solve the unification problem in each of such classes. The algorithms presented are partly drawn from the literature--and properly revisited and analyzed--and partly novel proposals. In particular, we present a new goal-driven algorithm for general ACI1 unification and a new simpler algorithm for general (Ab)(Cl) unification.Comment: 58 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP

Fixpoint Games on Continuous Lattices

Many analysis and verifications tasks, such as static program analyses and model-checking for temporal logics reduce to the solution of systems of equations over suitable lattices. Inspired by recent work on lattice-theoretic progress measures, we develop a game-theoretical approach to the solution of systems of monotone equations over lattices, where for each single equation either the least or greatest solution is taken. A simple parity game, referred to as fixpoint game, is defined that provides a correct and complete characterisation of the solution of equation systems over continuous lattices, a quite general class of lattices widely used in semantics. For powerset lattices the fixpoint game is intimately connected with classical parity games for $\mu$-calculus model-checking, whose solution can exploit as a key tool Jurdzi\'nski's small progress measures. We show how the notion of progress measure can be naturally generalised to fixpoint games over continuous lattices and we prove the existence of small progress measures. Our results lead to a constructive formulation of progress measures as (least) fixpoints. We refine this characterisation by introducing the notion of selection that allows one to constrain the plays in the parity game, enabling an effective (and possibly efficient) solution of the game, and thus of the associated verification problem. We also propose a logic for specifying the moves of the existential player that can be used to systematically derive simplified equations for efficiently computing progress measures. We discuss potential applications to the model-checking of latticed $\mu$-calculi and to the solution of fixpoint equations systems over the reals

Meta SOS - A Maude Based SOS Meta-Theory Framework

Meta SOS is a software framework designed to integrate the results from the meta-theory of structural operational semantics (SOS). These results include deriving semantic properties of language constructs just by syntactically analyzing their rule-based definition, as well as automatically deriving sound and ground-complete axiomatizations for languages, when considering a notion of behavioural equivalence. This paper describes the Meta SOS framework by blending aspects from the meta-theory of SOS, details on their implementation in Maude, and running examples.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2013, arXiv:1307.690