The Ecce and Logen Partial Evaluators and their Web Interfaces

We present Ecce and Logen, two partial evaluators for Prolog using the online and offline approach respectively. We briefly present the foundations of these tools and discuss various applications. We also present new implementations of these tools, carried out in Ciao Prolog. In addition to a command-line interface new user-friendly web interfaces were developed. These enable non-expert users to specialise logic programs using a web browser, without the need for a local installation

A Logical Foundation for Environment Classifiers

Taha and Nielsen have developed a multi-stage calculus {\lambda}{\alpha} with a sound type system using the notion of environment classifiers. They are special identifiers, with which code fragments and variable declarations are annotated, and their scoping mechanism is used to ensure statically that certain code fragments are closed and safely runnable. In this paper, we investigate the Curry-Howard isomorphism for environment classifiers by developing a typed {\lambda}-calculus {\lambda}|>. It corresponds to multi-modal logic that allows quantification by transition variables---a counterpart of classifiers---which range over (possibly empty) sequences of labeled transitions between possible worlds. This interpretation will reduce the "run" construct---which has a special typing rule in {\lambda}{\alpha}---and embedding of closed code into other code fragments of different stages---which would be only realized by the cross-stage persistence operator in {\lambda}{\alpha}---to merely a special case of classifier application. {\lambda}|> enjoys not only basic properties including subject reduction, confluence, and strong normalization but also an important property as a multi-stage calculus: time-ordered normalization of full reduction. Then, we develop a big-step evaluation semantics for an ML-like language based on {\lambda}|> with its type system and prove that the evaluation of a well-typed {\lambda}|> program is properly staged. We also identify a fragment of the language, where erasure evaluation is possible. Finally, we show that the proof system augmented with a classical axiom is sound and complete with respect to a Kripke semantics of the logic

Offline Specialisation in Prolog Using a Hand-Written Compiler Generator

The so called "cogen approach" to program specialisation, writing a compiler generator instead of a specialiser, has been used with considerable success in partial evaluation of both functional and imperative languages. This paper demonstrates that the "cogen" approach is also applicable to the specialisation of logic programs (called partial deduction when applied to pure logic programs) and leads to effective specialisers. Moreover, using good binding-time annotations, the speed-ups of the specialised programs are comparable to the speed-ups obtained with online specialisers. The paper first develops a generic approach to offline partial deduction and then a specific offline partial deduction method, leading to the offline system LIX for pure logic programs. While this is a usable specialiser by itself, its specialisation strategy is used to develop the "cogen" system LOGEN. Given a program, a specification of what inputs will be static, and an annotation specifying which calls should be unfolded, LOGEN generates a specialised specialiser for the program at hand. Running this specialiser with particular values for the static inputs results in the specialised program. While this requires two steps instead of one, the efficiency of the specialisation process is improved in situations where the same program is specialised multiple times. The paper also presents and evaluates an automatic binding-time analysis that is able to derive the annotations. While the derived annotations are still suboptimal compared to hand-crafted ones, they enable non-expert users to use the LOGEN system in a fully automated way Finally, LOGEN is extended so as to directly support a large part of Prolog's declarative and non-declarative features and so as to be able to perform so called mixline specialisations. In mixline specialisation some unfolding decisions depend on the outcome of tests performed at specialisation time instead of being hardwired into the specialiser

Graph Based Reduction of Program Verification Conditions

Increasing the automaticity of proofs in deductive verification of C programs is a challenging task. When applied to industrial C programs known heuristics to generate simpler verification conditions are not efficient enough. This is mainly due to their size and a high number of irrelevant hypotheses. This work presents a strategy to reduce program verification conditions by selecting their relevant hypotheses. The relevance of a hypothesis is determined by the combination of a syntactic analysis and two graph traversals. The first graph is labeled by constants and the second one by the predicates in the axioms. The approach is applied on a benchmark arising in industrial program verification

(Mechanical) Reasoning on Infinite Extensive Games

In order to better understand reasoning involved in analyzing infinite games in extensive form, we performed experiments in the proof assistant Coq that are reported here.Comment: 11

Paracomplete logic Kl: natural deduction, its automation, complexity and applications

In the development of many modern software solutions where the underlying systems are complex, dynamic and heterogeneous, the significance of specification-based verification is well accepted. However, often parts of the specification may not be known. Yet reasoning based on such incomplete specifications is very desirable. Here, paracomplete logics seem to be an appropriate formal setup: opposite to Tarski’s theory of truth with its principle of bivalence, in these logics a statement and its negation may be both untrue. An immediate result is that the law of excluded middle becomes invalid. In this paper we show a way to apply an automatic proof searching procedure for the paracomplete logic Kl to reason about incomplete information systems. We provide an original account of complexity of natural deduction systems, leading us closer to the efficiency of the presented proof search algorithm. Moreover, we have turned the assumptions management into an advantage showing the applicability of the proposed technique to assume-guarantee reasoning

Natural Deduction in a Paracomplete Setting

In this paper we present the automated proof search technique in natural deduction paracomplete logic. Here, for some statements we do not have evidence to conclude if they are true or false, as it happens in the classical framework. As a consequence, for example, formulae of the type p_:p, are not valid. In this paper we formulate the natural deduction system for paracompletelogic PComp, explain its main concepts, define proof searching techniques and the searching algorithm providing examples proofs

Tackling Incomplete System Specifcations Using Natural Deduction in the Paracomplete Setting

In many modern computer applications the significanceofspecificationbasedverificationiswellaccepted.However, when we deal with such complex processes as the integration of heterogeneous systems, parts of specification may be not known. Therefore it is important to have techniques that are able to cope with such incomplete information. An adequate formal set up is given by so called paracomplete logics, where, contrary to the classical framework, for some statements we do not have evidence to conclude if they are true or false. As a consequence, for example, the law of excluded middle is not valid. In this paper we justify how the automated proof search technique for paracomplete logic PComp can be efficiently applied to the reasoning about systems with incomplete information. Note that for many researchers, one of the core features of natural deduction, the opportunity to introduce arbitrary formulae as assumptions, has been a point of great scepticism regarding the very possibility of the automation of the proof search. Here, not only we show the contrary, but we also turned the assumptions management into an advantage showing the applicability of the proposed technique to assume-guarantee reasoning. Keywords - incomplete information, automated natural deduction, paracomplete logic, requirements engineering, assumeguarantee reasoning, component based system assembly