Executing Formal Specifications by Translation to Higher Order Logic Programming

. We describe the construction and use of a system for translating higher order logic-based specifications into programs in the higher order logic programming language Lambda Prolog. The translation improves on previous work in the field of executing specifications by allowing formulas with quantifiers to be executed, and by permitting users to pose Prolog-style queries with free variables to be instantiated by the system. We also discuss various alternative target languages and design decisions in implementing the translator. 1 Introduction One of the early goals of formal specification in software engineering was to provide a formal model against which an implementation of the software, or a more detailed model, could be checked. This goal has not been fully realized in practice. But even where no tools exist to check an implementation against a specification, the process of writing a formal specification (FS) from an informal specification (IS) can still be very useful. For instanc..