Automated Termination Proofs for Logic Programs by Term Rewriting

There are two kinds of approaches for termination analysis of logic programs: "transformational" and "direct" ones. Direct approaches prove termination directly on the basis of the logic program. Transformational approaches transform a logic program into a term rewrite system (TRS) and then analyze termination of the resulting TRS instead. Thus, transformational approaches make all methods previously developed for TRSs available for logic programs as well. However, the applicability of most existing transformations is quite restricted, as they can only be used for certain subclasses of logic programs. (Most of them are restricted to well-moded programs.) In this paper we improve these transformations such that they become applicable for any definite logic program. To simulate the behavior of logic programs by TRSs, we slightly modify the notion of rewriting by permitting infinite terms. We show that our transformation results in TRSs which are indeed suitable for automated termination analysis. In contrast to most other methods for termination of logic programs, our technique is also sound for logic programming without occur check, which is typically used in practice. We implemented our approach in the termination prover AProVE and successfully evaluated it on a large collection of examples.Comment: 49 page

The 2D Dependency Pair Framework for Conditional Rewrite Systems¿Part II: Advanced Processors and Implementation Techniques

[EN] Proving termination of programs in `real-life¿ rewriting-based languages like CafeOBJ, Haskell, Maude, etc., is an important subject of research. To advance this goal, faithfully cap- turing the impact in the termination behavior of the main language features (e.g., conditions in program rules) is essential. In Part I of this work, we have introduced a 2D Dependency Pair Framework for automatically proving termination properties of Conditional Term Rewriting Systems. Our framework relies on the notion of processor as the main practical device to deal with proofs of termination properties of conditional rewrite systems. Processors are used to decompose and simplify the proofs in a divide and conquer approach. With the basic proof framework defined in Part I, here we introduce new processors to further improve the abil- ity of the 2D Dependency Pair Framework to deal with proofs of termination properties of conditional rewrite systems. We also discuss relevant implementation techniques to use such processors in practice.Partially supported by the EU (FEDER) and projects RTI2018-094403-B-C32, PROMETEO/2019/098, SP20180225. Jose Meseguer was supported by grants NSF CNS 13-19109 and NRL N00173-17-1-G002. Salvador Lucas' research was partly developed during a sabbatical year at the UIUC.Lucas Alba, S.; Meseguer, J.; Gutiérrez Gil, R. (2020). The 2D Dependency Pair Framework for Conditional Rewrite Systems¿Part II: Advanced Processors and Implementation Techniques. Journal of Automated Reasoning. 64(8):1611-1662. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-020-09542-3S16111662648Arts, T., Giesl, J.: Termination of term rewriting using dependency pairs. Theor. Comput. Sci. 236(1–2), 133–178 (2000)Alarcón, B., Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S., Navarro-Marset, R.: Proving termination properties with MU-TERM. In: Proceedings of AMAST’10, LNCS, vol. 6486, pp. 201–208 (2011)Baader, F., Nipkow, T.: Term Rewriting and all That. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)Barwise, J.: An introduction to first-order logic. In: Barwise, J. (ed.) Handbook of Mathematical Logic. North-Holland, Amsterdam (1977)Clavel, M., Durán, F., Eker, S., Lincoln, P., Martí-Oliet, N., Meseguer, J., Talcott, C.: All About Maude—A High-Performance Logical Framework. LNCS 4350, Springer, New York (2007)Contejean, E., Marché, C., Tomás, A.-P., Urbain, X.: Mechanically proving termination using polynomial interpretations. J. Autom. Reason. 34(4), 325–363 (2006)Dershowitz, N.: A note on simplification orderings. Inf. Process. Lett. 9(5), 212–215 (1979)Durán, F., Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: MTT: the Maude termination tool (system description). In: Proceedings of IJCAR’08, LNAI, vol. 5195, pp. 313–319 (2008)Endrullis, J., Waldmann, J., Zantema, H.: Matrix interpretations for proving termination of term rewriting. J. Autom. Reason. 40(2–3), 195–220 (2008)Giesl, J., Schneider-Kamp, P., Thiemann, R.: AProVE 1.2: Automatic Termination proofs in the dependency pair framework. In: Proceeding of IJCAR’06, LNAI, vol. 4130, pp. 281–286 (2006)Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P.: The dependency pair framework: combining techniques for automated termination proofs. In: Proceedings of LPAR’04, LNAI, vol. 3452, pp. 301–331 (2004)Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P., Falke, S.: Mechanizing and improving dependency pairs. J. Autom. Reason. 37(3), 155–203 (2006)Goguen, J., Meseguer, J.: Models and equality for logical programming. In: Proceedings of TAPSOFT’87, LNCS, vol. 250, pp. 1–22 (1987)Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S.: Automatic generation of logical models with AGES. In: Proceedings of CADE 2019, LNCS, vol. 11716, pp. 287–299 (2019). Tool page: http://zenon.dsic.upv.es/ages/Hirokawa, N., Middeldorp, A.: Dependency pairs revisited. 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Lett. 95, 446–453 (2005)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Models for logics and conditional constraints in automated proofs of termination. In: Proceedings of AISC’14, LNAI, vol. 8884, pp. 9–20 (2014)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: 2D Dependency pairs for proving operational termination of CTRSs. In: Escobar, S., (ed) Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Rewriting Logic and its Applications, WRLA’14, LNCS, vol. 8663, pp. 195–212 (2014)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Dependency pairs for proving termination properties of conditional term rewriting systems. J. Log. Algebr. Methods Program. 86, 236–268 (2017)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Normal forms and normal theories in conditional rewriting. J. Log. Algebr. Methods Program. 85(1), 67–97 (2016)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J., Gutiérrez, R.: Extending the 2D DP framework for conditional term rewriting systems. In: Selected Papers from LOPSTR’14, LNCS, vol. 8981, pp. 113–130 (2015)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J., Gutiérrez, R.: The 2D dependency pair framework for conditional rewrite systems. Part I: Definition and basic processors. J. Comput. Syst. Sci. 96, 74–106 (2018)McCune, W.: Prover9 & Mace4. http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mccune/prover9/ (2005–2010)Ohlebusch, E.: Advanced Topics in Term Rewriting. Springer, New York (2002)Schernhammer, F., Gramlich, B.: Characterizing and proving operational termination of deterministic conditional term rewriting systems. J. Log. Algebr. Program. 79, 659–688 (2010)Sternagel, T., Middeldorp, A.: Conditional confluence (system description). In: Proceedings of RTA-TLCA’14, LNCS, vol. f8560, pp. 456–465 (2014)Sternagel, T., Middeldorp, A.: Infeasible conditional critical pairs. In: Proceedings of IWC’15, pp. 13–18 (2014)Thiemann, R.: The DP Framework for Proving Termination of Term Rewriting. PhD Thesis, RWTH Aachen, Technical Report AIB-2007-17 (2007)Thiemann, R., Giesl, J., Schneider-Kamp, P.: Improved modular termination proofs using dependency pairs. In: Proceedings of IJCAR’04, LNAI, vol. 3097, pp. 75–90 (2004)Wang, H.: Logic of many-sorted theories. J. Symb. Log. 17(2), 105–116 (1952

Models for logics and conditional constraints in automated proofs of termination

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13770-4_3Reasoning about termination of declarative programs, which are described by means of a computational logic, requires the definition of appropriate abstractions as semantic models of the logic, and also handling the conditional constraints which are often obtained. The formal treatment of such constraints in automated proofs, often using numeric interpretations and (arithmetic) constraint solving can greatly benefit from appropriate techniques to deal with the conditional (in)equations at stake. Existing results from linear algebra or real algebraic geometry are useful to deal with them but have received only scant attention to date. We investigate the definition and use of numeric models for logics and the resolution of linear and algebraic conditional constraints as unifying techniques for proving termination of declarative programs.Developed during a sabbatical year at UIUC. Supported by projects NSF CNS13-19109, MINECO TIN2010-21062-C02-02 and TIN2013-45732-C4-1-P, and GV BEST/2014/026 and PROMETEO/2011/052.Lucas Alba, S.; Meseguer, J. (2014). Models for logics and conditional constraints in automated proofs of termination. En Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation. Springer Verlag (Germany). 9-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13770-4_3S920Alarcón, B., Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S., Navarro-Marset, R.: Proving Termination Properties with mu-term. In: Johnson, M., Pavlovic, D. (eds.) AMAST 2010. LNCS, vol. 6486, pp. 201–208. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)Alarcón, B., Lucas, S., Navarro-Marset, R.: Using Matrix Interpretations over the Reals in Proofs of Termination. In: Proc. of PROLE 2009, pp. 255–264 (2009)Clavel, M., Durán, F., Eker, S., Lincoln, P., Martí-Oliet, N., Meseguer, J., Talcott, C. (eds.): All About Maude - A High-Performance Logical Framework. LNCS, vol. 4350. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)Contejean, E., Marché, C., Tomás, A.-P., Urbain, X.: Mechanically proving termination using polynomial interpretations. J. of Aut. Reas. 34(4), 325–363 (2006)Endrullis, J., Waldmann, J., Zantema, H.: Matrix Interpretations for Proving Termination of Term Rewriting. J. of Aut. Reas. 40(2-3), 195–220 (2008)Fuhs, C., Giesl, J., Middeldorp, A., Schneider-Kamp, P., Thiemann, R., Zankl, H.: Maximal Termination. In: Voronkov, A. (ed.) RTA 2008. LNCS, vol. 5117, pp. 110–125. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)Futatsugi, K., Diaconescu, R.: CafeOBJ Report. AMAST Series. World Scientific (1998)Hudak, P., Peyton-Jones, S.J., Wadler, P.: Report on the Functional Programming Language Haskell: a non–strict, purely functional language. Sigplan Notices 27(5), 1–164 (1992)Lucas, S.: Context-sensitive computations in functional and functional logic programs. Journal of Functional and Logic Programming 1998(1), 1–61 (1998)Lucas, S.: Polynomials over the reals in proofs of termination: from theory to practice. RAIRO Theoretical Informatics and Applications 39(3), 547–586 (2005)Lucas, S., Marché, C., Meseguer, J.: Operational termination of conditional term rewriting systems. Information Processing Letters 95, 446–453 (2005)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Proving Operational Termination of Declarative Programs in General Logics. In: Proc. of PPDP 2014, pp. 111–122. ACM Digital Library (2014)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: 2D Dependency Pairs for Proving Operational Termination of CTRSs. In: Proc. of WRLA 2014. LNCS, vol. 8663 (to appear, 2014)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J., Gutiérrez, R.: Extending the 2D DP Framework for CTRSs. In: Selected papers of LOPSTR 2014. LNCS (to appear, 2015)Meseguer, J.: General Logics. In: Ebbinghaus, H.-D., et al. (eds.) Logic Colloquium 1987, pp. 275–329. North-Holland (1989)Nguyen, M.T., de Schreye, D., Giesl, J., Schneider-Kamp, P.: Polytool: Polynomial interpretations as a basis for termination of logic programs. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming 11(1), 33–63 (2011)Ohlebusch, E.: Advanced Topics in Term Rewriting. Springer (April 2002)Prestel, A., Delzell, C.N.: Positive Polynomials. In: From Hilbert’s 17th Problem to Real Algebra. Springer, Berlin (2001)Podelski, A., Rybalchenko, A.: A Complete Method for the Synthesis of Linear Ranking Functions. In: Steffen, B., Levi, G. (eds.) VMCAI 2004. LNCS, vol. 2937, pp. 239–251. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)Schrijver, A.: Theory of linear and integer programming. John Wiley & Sons (1986)Zantema, H.: Termination of Context-Sensitive Rewriting. In: Comon, H. (ed.) RTA 1997. LNCS, vol. 1232, pp. 172–186. Springer, Heidelberg (1997

Using Well-Founded Relations for Proving Operational Termination

[EN] In this paper, we study operational termination, a proof theoretical notion for capturing the termination behavior of computational systems. We prove that operational termination can be characterized at different levels by means of well- founded relations on specific formulas which can be obtained from the considered system. We show how to obtain such well-founded relations from logical models which can be automatically generated using existing tools.Partially supported by the EU (FEDER), Projects TIN2015-69175-C4-1-R, and GV PROMETEOII/2015/013.Lucas Alba, S. (2020). Using Well-Founded Relations for Proving Operational Termination. Journal of Automated Reasoning. 64(2):167-195. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10817-019-09514-2S167195642Alarcón, B., Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S., Navarro-Marset, R.: Proving termination properties with MU-TERM. In: Proceedings of AMAST’10, LNCS, vol. 6486, pp. 201–208, Springer (2011)Aguirre, L., Martí-Oliet, N., Palomino, M., Pita, I.: Sentence-normalized conditional narrowing modulo in rewriting logic and Maude. J. Automat. Reason. 60(4), 421–463 (2018)Arts, T., Giesl, J.: Proving innermost normalisation automatically. In: Proceedings of RTA’97, LNCS, vol. 1232, pp. 157–171, Springer, Berlin (1997)Arts, T., Giesl, J.: Termination of term rewriting using dependency pairs. Theor. Comput. Sci. 236(1–2), 133–178 (2000)Baader, F., Nipkow, T.: Term Rewriting and All That. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)Clavel, M., Durán, F., Eker, S., Lincoln, P., Martí-Oliet, N., Meseguer, J., Talcott, C.: All About Maude—A High-Performance Logical Framework. LNCS, vol. 4350, Springer (2007)Durán, F., Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Methods for proving termination of rewriting-based programming languages by transformation. Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 248, 93–113 (2009)Durán, F., Lucas, S., Marché, C., Meseguer, J., Urbain, X.: Proving operational termination of membership equational programs. High. Order Symb. Comput. 21(1–2), 59–88 (2008)Falke, S., Kapur, D.: Operational termination of conditional rewriting with built-in numbers and semantic data structures. Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 237, 75–90 (2009)Floyd, R.W.: Assigning meanings to programs. Math. Asp. Comput. Sci. 19, 19–32 (1967)Giesl, J., Arts, T.: Verification of Erlang processes by dependency pairs. Appl. Algebra Eng. Commun. Comput. 12, 39–72 (2001)Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P., Falke, S.: Mechanizing and improving dependency pairs. J. Autom. Reason. 37(3), 155–203 (2006)Giesl, J., Thiemann, R., Schneider-Kamp, P.: The dependency pair framework: combining techniques for automated termination proofs. In: Proceedings of LPAR’04, LNAI, vol. 3452, pp. 301–331 (2004)Giesl, J., Schneider-Kamp, P., Thiemann, R.: AProVE 1.2: automatic termination proofs in the dependency pair framework. In: Proceedings of IJCAR’06, LNAI, vol. 4130, pp. 281–286 (2006)Goguen, J., Meseguer, J.: Models and equality for logical programming. In: Proceedings of TAPSOFT’87, LNCS, vol. 250, pp. 1–22 (1987)Goguen, J., Meseguer, J.: Order-sorted algebra I: equational deduction for multiple inheritance, overloading, exceptions and partial operations. Theor. Comput. Sci. 105, 217–273 (1992)Gutiérrez, R., Lucas, S., Reinoso, P.: A tool for the automatic generation of logical models of order-sorted first-order theories. In: Proceedings of PROLE’16, pp. 215–230 (2016)Hodges, W.: Model Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1993)Korp, M., Sternagel, C., Zankl, H., Middeldorp, A.: Tyrolean termination tool 2. In: Proceedings of RTA 2009, LNCS, vol. 5595, pp. 295–304 (2009)Lalement, R.: Computation as Logic. 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Methods Program. 86, 236–268 (2017)Lucas, S., Meseguer, J.: Proving operational termination of declarative programs in general logics. In: Proceedings of PPDP’14, pp. 111–122. ACM Digital Library (2014)McCune, W.: Prover9 & Mace4. http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mccune/prover9/ (2005–2010). Accessed 9 Feb 2019Mendelson, E.: Introduction to Mathematical Logic, 4th edn. Chapman & Hall, London (1997)Meseguer, J.: General logics. In: Logic Colloquium’87, pp. 275–329 (1989)O’Donnell, M.J.: Equational Logic as a Programming Language. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1985)Ohlebusch, E.: Advanced Topics in Term Rewriting. Springer, Berlin (2002)Prawitz, D.: Natural Deduction. A Proof Theoretical Study. Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965. Reprinted by Dover Publications (2006)Rosu, G., Stefanescu, A., Ciobaca, S., Moore, B.M.: One-path reachability logic. In: Proceedings of LICS 2013, pp. 358–367. IEEE Press (2013)Shapiro, S.: Foundations Without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-Order Logic. 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12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012) : WST 2012, February 19–23, 2012, Obergurgl, Austria / ed. by Georg Moser

This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012), to be held February 19–23, 2012 in Obergurgl, Austria. The goal of the Workshop on Termination is to be a venue for presentation and discussion of all topics in and around termination. In this way, the workshop tries to bridge the gaps between different communities interested and active in research in and around termination. The 12th International Workshop on Termination in Obergurgl continues the successful workshops held in St. Andrews (1993), La Bresse (1995), Ede (1997), Dagstuhl (1999), Utrecht (2001), Valencia (2003), Aachen (2004), Seattle (2006), Paris (2007), Leipzig (2009), and Edinburgh (2010). The 12th International Workshop on Termination did welcome contributions on all aspects of termination and complexity analysis. Contributions from the imperative, constraint, functional, and logic programming communities, and papers investigating applications of complexity or termination (for example in program transformation or theorem proving) were particularly welcome. We did receive 18 submissions which all were accepted. Each paper was assigned two reviewers. In addition to these 18 contributed talks, WST 2012, hosts three invited talks by Alexander Krauss, Martin Hofmann, and Fausto Spoto

CoLoR: a Coq library on well-founded rewrite relations and its application to the automated verification of termination certificates

Termination is an important property of programs; notably required for programs formulated in proof assistants. It is a very active subject of research in the Turing-complete formalism of term rewriting systems, where many methods and tools have been developed over the years to address this problem. Ensuring reliability of those tools is therefore an important issue. In this paper we present a library formalizing important results of the theory of well-founded (rewrite) relations in the proof assistant Coq. We also present its application to the automated verification of termination certificates, as produced by termination tools

Polytool: polynomial interpretations as a basis for termination analysis of Logic programs

Our goal is to study the feasibility of porting termination analysis techniques developed for one programming paradigm to another paradigm. In this paper, we show how to adapt termination analysis techniques based on polynomial interpretations - very well known in the context of term rewrite systems (TRSs) - to obtain new (non-transformational) ter- mination analysis techniques for definite logic programs (LPs). This leads to an approach that can be seen as a direct generalization of the traditional techniques in termination analysis of LPs, where linear norms and level mappings are used. Our extension general- izes these to arbitrary polynomials. We extend a number of standard concepts and results on termination analysis to the context of polynomial interpretations. We also propose a constraint-based approach for automatically generating polynomial interpretations that satisfy the termination conditions. Based on this approach, we implemented a new tool, called Polytool, for automatic termination analysis of LPs

Automated verification of termination certificates

In order to increase user confidence, many automated theorem provers provide certificates that can be independently verified. In this paper, we report on our progress in developing a standalone tool for checking the correctness of certificates for the termination of term rewrite systems, and formally proving its correctness in the proof assistant Coq. To this end, we use the extraction mechanism of Coq and the library on rewriting theory and termination called CoLoR

Automated verification of refinement laws

Demonic refinement algebras are variants of Kleene algebras. Introduced by von Wright as a light-weight variant of the refinement calculus, their intended semantics are positively disjunctive predicate transformers, and their calculus is entirely within first-order equational logic. So, for the first time, off-the-shelf automated theorem proving (ATP) becomes available for refinement proofs. We used ATP to verify a toolkit of basic refinement laws. Based on this toolkit, we then verified two classical complex refinement laws for action systems by ATP: a data refinement law and Back's atomicity refinement law. We also present a refinement law for infinite loops that has been discovered through automated analysis. Our proof experiments not only demonstrate that refinement can effectively be automated, they also compare eleven different ATP systems and suggest that program verification with variants of Kleene algebras yields interesting theorem proving benchmarks. Finally, we apply hypothesis learning techniques that seem indispensable for automating more complex proofs