Combining Static and Dynamic Contract Checking for Curry

Static type systems are usually not sufficient to express all requirements on function calls. Hence, contracts with pre- and postconditions can be used to express more complex constraints on operations. Contracts can be checked at run time to ensure that operations are only invoked with reasonable arguments and return intended results. Although such dynamic contract checking provides more reliable program execution, it requires execution time and could lead to program crashes that might be detected with more advanced methods at compile time. To improve this situation for declarative languages, we present an approach to combine static and dynamic contract checking for the functional logic language Curry. Based on a formal model of contract checking for functional logic programming, we propose an automatic method to verify contracts at compile time. If a contract is successfully verified, dynamic checking of it can be omitted. This method decreases execution time without degrading reliable program execution. In the best case, when all contracts are statically verified, it provides trust in the software since crashes due to contract violations cannot occur during program execution.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 27th International Symposium on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2017), Namur, Belgium, 10-12 October 2017 (arXiv:1708.07854

Reducing the Number of Annotations in a Verification-oriented Imperative Language

Automated software verification is a very active field of research which has made enormous progress both in theoretical and practical aspects. Recently, an important amount of research effort has been put into applying these techniques on top of mainstream programming languages. These languages typically provide powerful features such as reflection, aliasing and polymorphism which are handy for practitioners but, in contrast, make verification a real challenge. In this work we present Pest, a simple experimental, while-style, multiprocedural, imperative programming language which was conceived with verifiability as one of its main goals. This language forces developers to concurrently think about both the statements needed to implement an algorithm and the assertions required to prove its correctness. In order to aid programmers, we propose several techniques to reduce the number and complexity of annotations required to successfully verify their programs. In particular, we show that high-level iteration constructs may alleviate the need for providing complex loop annotations.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure

Static and dynamic semantics of NoSQL languages

We present a calculus for processing semistructured data that spans differences of application area among several novel query languages, broadly categorized as "NoSQL". This calculus lets users define their own operators, capturing a wider range of data processing capabilities, whilst providing a typing precision so far typical only of primitive hard-coded operators. The type inference algorithm is based on semantic type checking, resulting in type information that is both precise, and flexible enough to handle structured and semistructured data. We illustrate the use of this calculus by encoding a large fragment of Jaql, including operations and iterators over JSON, embedded SQL expressions, and co-grouping, and show how the encoding directly yields a typing discipline for Jaql as it is, namely without the addition of any type definition or type annotation in the code

Lucretia - intersection type polymorphism for scripting languages

Scripting code may present maintenance problems in the long run. There is, then, the call for methodologies that make it possible to control the properties of programs written in dynamic languages in an automatic fashion. We introduce Lucretia, a core language with an introspection primitive. Lucretia is equipped with a (retrofitted) static type system based on local updates of types that describe the structure of objects being used. In this way, we deal with one of the most dynamic features of scripting languages, that is, the runtime modification of object interfaces. Judgements in our systems have a Hoare-like shape, as they have a precondition and a postcondition part. Preconditions describe static approximations of the interfaces of visible objects before a certain expression has been executed and postconditions describe them after its execution. The field update operation complicates the issue of aliasing in the system. We cope with it by introducing intersection types in method signatures.Comment: In Proceedings ITRS 2014, arXiv:1503.0437